Year 2, Day 168: Psalms 13-14

Psalm 13

Again we see humanity in Psalm 13.  This is one of the characteristics about the psalms that make them unique.  The psalms are a direct pipeline to the “instantaneous” author.

Let me explain that concept a little.  When we read books like Genesis or Exodus – or even Mark or John – we have the story being told by someone who has either experienced it and is writing it sometime after the fact or we have the experience of someone writing about it having been told the story from another person.  This tends to make the story factual – which is a good thing – but slightly less gritty from an emotional perspective.  In the psalms we hear the immediate emotional cry.  We hear the gut-wrenching pain of the moment.  We hear the abounding personal joy and celebration that wells up in the moment of victory and relief.  In the psalms we have the human condition “in the moment.”

Psalm 13 tells us of a David who feels abandoned.  He feels as though God is not watching over him.  He feels as though he is his own counsel as opposed to having the counsel of God.  His passion is drained away and he feels as though God is not there to help him recharge and pursue life.

We’ve all been there, I’m sure.  Some of us are there more often than others.  Some of us feel it more deeply than others.  But we’ve all been there.  I have no doubt that at some point in all of our lives we have all asked God, “Hey, when are you going to show yourself as being present in my life?”  I’m not saying that’s particularly correct or righteous.  But we have all been there.

In the psalms we also have the blunt reminders of how the human condition contrasts with the faithful pursuit of God.  David lets out his genuine humanity in the beginning of the psalm and then turns to genuine faith in the last few verses.  What does the faithful person remember?  We remember that we do trust in God’s steadfast love.  We do rejoice in His salvation.  We do know that even when we may not see Him, it is not because He is not there.  We will sing God’s praises, because He has bountifully given to us. 

We cannot deny our humanity; but that doesn’t mean that we have to wallow within it, either.

Psalm 14

Psalm 14 is a very complex psalm.  At first, it seems like a straightforward warning psalm.  David is warning the unrighteous to fear God.  He is calling out those who ignore God as being silly and foolish.  He makes a great case for genuine concern about those who have no time for God.

He also makes a great case of how those who do not fear God have abominable actions.  They follow their own pursuits and their own desires.  They “eat up” or “devour” the righteous people without any thought.  They trample over the poor and take their share of life.  In this psalm we can really understand why it is important to remember that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.  When we forget to fear the Lord, we simply look to ourselves and our own desires far more often than we should.

However, the complex portion of this psalm comes in the very last verse.  David genuinely desires for the salvation for his people.  He genuinely desires that his people would be pulled out of the quagmire in which they have fallen.  He genuinely hopes that when God restores the fortune of His people that his people would be glad.

While that is a great desire – look what actually happens among God’s people.  When salvation truly comes to the earth in a bodily and eternal form – in the form of Jesus Christ – it can truly be claimed that salvation came out of Zion.  But what was the reaction of His people?  Did they rejoice?  Did they see their fortune being restored?  Did God’s people celebrate that the savior of the world has come to the world out of their midst?

Sure, some of them did.  Praise be to God that some of them did!  But not too many did.  Salvation came out of Zion and most of God’s people did not rejoice.  They did not recognize Him.  For the record, most of the rest of the world didn’t recognize salvation in Jesus Christ, either.

But what makes this psalm so deeply complex is the understanding that when we love God and see the world through His eyes, we hope for things that are different than the world.  Our hopes and dreams for the people around us sometimes go unrealized because what we hope for in the Lord does not always match up with that for which they hope.  In fact, unless those around us are seeing through the eyes of God, it often doesn’t match up.  That is the real complexity of this psalm.  The psalm that begins on a note of warning ends in a tone of hopefulness.  But it is a hopefulness that is unrealized when Jesus comes to this earth to live for the first time – and ultimately even to die because the hope in this psalm is unrealized.

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