Tremoring Notes

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

    How long will you hide your face from me?

2  How long must I take counsel in my soul

    and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;

    light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”

    lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6 I will sing to the Lord,

    because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 13

Me. Us.

Stretched beyond.

Forgotten.

Abandoned.

God.

Gone.

Distant.

Hidden.

Silent.

Us. 

Tremoring notes, doubting questions, shaking faith. 

Where? Is this not not supposed to be? What about the Father? What about the good? Anger. Hurt.

God, you let it happen again.

God, you went too far. This is more than I can bear.

God, I feel like I’m supposed to put on a happy face. I’m not supposed to feel this way towards you.

God, you didn’t come through.

God, you failed.

God, where were you?

God, why do you let the same things, the same hurt, the same patterns happen again and again?

God, I’m weak, I’m needy, you are supposed to hear. Why do you feel silent?

God, I had gotten my hopes up again but. But. You let them be crushed again.

God, dare I trust you again?

God, how can I keep going?

God, I could bear this except you seem distant.

Lest I am shaken (v. 4). Shaken. Fragile. Trying to cling to faith but…. Enemies. Sorrow in my heart all the day. Unabating. Constant. Enemy exalting and rejoicing. Death’s door—either physically, spiritually, mentally, soul-fully, emotionally. No light at the end of the tunnel—it looks like the enemy will win.

Lonely.

God gone.

Does anyone else know or understand? 

Questions our tremoring souls barely dare to ask. 

But the psalmist still pens. Voices. Directs his cry to the God who is not there.

His only hope, “Consider and answer.” Is the “consider” a questioning plea, an uncertain if this God will listen? Is it said from the depths of faith, from a well beneath the circumstances and emotions and anxious doubt?

How can the psalmist end, “I have trusted in your steadfast love”? “My heart shall rejoice in your salvation”? Even with notes of singing? And “because he has dealt bountifully with me”? Where is the bountiful? Where are the notes of reprieve that can be collected enough to make a melody for the Lord?

Steadfast love—God holds him fast. He may be shaken, but God is active in holding, sustaining.

Shall—God is an active, moving God of the impossible.

Has dealt bountifully—all is by grace. We don’t even deserve what we have.

Steadfast love—present.

Shall—future.

Has dealt—past.

Past, present, future, surrounded by God. Even if this moment doesn’t seem it, it is couched in time in a God without time who inserted himself in time.

Did he say it with gritted teeth, repeating it until it became real, larger than his enemies?

Did he say it in fear, with tremoring notes, until it gained strength and soared into song?

Steadfast love, steadfast love, steadfast love.

Psalm 22 is another psalm that echoes with the cries of “How long? Do not forget, do not abandon, where are you?” And Psalm 22 was picked up by Jesus on the cross. That was his psalm. He was the one abandoned by God on the cross so we would never be abandoned. He tasted death so that we could pray “light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Ps. 13:3). He was the one who lifted up the questioning, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—he knows our questions and is a sympathetic high priest. He holds us when we doubt. When we fear our faith will fail.