How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
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?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. (Psalms 13:1-4)
Waiting. This morning I reflected on what it must have been like for Jesus' followers on this day after the crucifixion, while Jesus lay cold in the grave. We have the luxury of knowing what came after; they didn't. All they knew was earth-shattering loss, the raw, recent, infinitely painful memory of the unthinkable.
I remember the minutes, hours, and days after the 9/11 attacks,--experiencing a sense of fear and insecurity that most Americans, myself included, had never imagined. What's the next attack going to be? Where? How many people will die? Will we ever be able to stop this?
And then now, after several weeks being mostly holed up in our own homes, we have so many unanswered questions about the future, about when this will end, about how things will change.
I write this less to compare our experience to that of the disciples', but as part of my own reflection on how it feels to be in that dark in-between place, that place of uncertain waiting, of not knowing what's to come, not knowing when this period of isolation will end.
Psalms 13 ends with these comforting words:
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Those are not always easy words to say, when you're in the deepest pit of depression or hopelessness, or feeling the weight of uncertainty about the future. I wonder if they were easy to write, if the Psalmist really felt what he was writing, or if he was writing from such a dark place that he only had his faith to go by.
Today, I am thinking of the followers of Jesus, that first day after the crucifixion, who had only their faith to go by, and who were no doubt wondering if that faith had been misplaced. I imagine the sunset was long in coming that day.
Photo: Sunset from an Appalachian Trail shelter (no idea which one), taken by Dan Rogers on his 1999 thru-hike.
How long will you hide your face from me?
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?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. (Psalms 13:1-4)
Waiting. This morning I reflected on what it must have been like for Jesus' followers on this day after the crucifixion, while Jesus lay cold in the grave. We have the luxury of knowing what came after; they didn't. All they knew was earth-shattering loss, the raw, recent, infinitely painful memory of the unthinkable.
I remember the minutes, hours, and days after the 9/11 attacks,--experiencing a sense of fear and insecurity that most Americans, myself included, had never imagined. What's the next attack going to be? Where? How many people will die? Will we ever be able to stop this?
And then now, after several weeks being mostly holed up in our own homes, we have so many unanswered questions about the future, about when this will end, about how things will change.
I write this less to compare our experience to that of the disciples', but as part of my own reflection on how it feels to be in that dark in-between place, that place of uncertain waiting, of not knowing what's to come, not knowing when this period of isolation will end.
Psalms 13 ends with these comforting words:
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Those are not always easy words to say, when you're in the deepest pit of depression or hopelessness, or feeling the weight of uncertainty about the future. I wonder if they were easy to write, if the Psalmist really felt what he was writing, or if he was writing from such a dark place that he only had his faith to go by.
Today, I am thinking of the followers of Jesus, that first day after the crucifixion, who had only their faith to go by, and who were no doubt wondering if that faith had been misplaced. I imagine the sunset was long in coming that day.
Photo: Sunset from an Appalachian Trail shelter (no idea which one), taken by Dan Rogers on his 1999 thru-hike.
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