Psalm 102
O Lord, listen to my prayer
and let my cry for help reach you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Turn your ear towards me
and answer me quickly when I call.
For my days are vanishing like smoke,
my bones burn away like a fire.
My heart is withered like the grass.
I forget to eat my bread.
I cry with all my strength
and my skin clings to my bones.
I have become like a pelican in the wilderness
like an owl in desolate places.
I lie awake and I moan
like some lonely bird on a roof.
All day long my foes revile me;
those who hate me use my name as a curse.
The bread I eat is ashes;
my drink is mingled with tears.
In your anger, Lord, and your fury
you have lifted me up and thrown me down.
My days are like a passing shadow
and I wither away like the grass.
But you, O Lord, will endure for ever
and your name from age to age.
You will arise and have mercy on Zion:
for this is the time to have mercy,
(yes, the time appointed has come)
for your servants love her very stones,
are moved with pity even for her dust.
The nations shall fear the name of the Lord
and all the earth’s kings your glory,
when the Lord shall build up Zion again
and appear in all his glory.
Then he will turn to the prayers of the helpless;
he will not despise their prayers.
Let this be written for ages to come
that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord;
for the Lord leaned down from his sanctuary on high.
He looked down from heaven to the earth
that he might hear the groans of the prisoners
and free those condemned to die.
Our descendents shall dwell untroubled
and their race shall endure before you
that the name of the Lord may be proclaimed in Zion
and his praise in the heart of Jerusalem,
when peoples and kingdoms are gathered together
to pay their homage to the Lord.
He has broken my strength in mid-course;
he has shortened the days of my life.
I say to God: “Do not take me away
before my day are complete,
you, whose days last from age to age.
Long ago you founded the earth
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish but you will remain.
They will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like clothes that are changed.
But you neither change, nor have an end.”
Reflection
This ancient anonymous prayer-lament seems remarkably contemporary. Faced with the horror of a world where thousands of people are dying of starvation, or crushed by arbitrary violence, where towns are being wantonly reduced to rubble, we lament. We see that the universe is not exclusively rational – that waves of feeling get out of control. Does nobody care?
We may, like the psalmist, retreat into ourselves. He gives a vivid description of his distress; he is powerless, anxious, afraid, very lonely. There is no connection here with personal wrong doing; but in a world of deep fake, he is reviled. God’s behaviour too is opaque and arbitrary. He picks him up in kindness and love only to dash him down like an enemy. Lengthening shadows indicate the approach of death and the petitioner is left to wither away in mourning.
He then turns to the future, contrasting his mortality with God’s immortality; God’s promises to restore an abandoned Zion may ultimately prove true; a change in the city’s fortunes may be imminent. Certainly this is the hope of God’s servants who cling to Zion’s scattered stones and ruins! The people of God who have borne suffering and despair now share God’s plan for Zion with foreign peoples and kingdoms; all have their part to play in the future of God’s city.
But the speaker is not consoled. The vision of change in Zion’s fortunes is too far ahead – the cries of the destitute are yet to be heard, captives still to be released. Although he now pleads directly to God for rescue from premature death, he knows that he is subject to mortality like every other creature – but he knows too that God endures and is not subject to the passage of time. In that lies the firm hope of succeeding generations.
Prayer
Today, O Lord, give me a strong sense that you are by my side. If I should fall into any adversity, then let me not brood upon my own sorrows, as if I alone in the world were suffering, but let me busy myself in encouraging others who need help. So may the power of my Lord Jesus Christ be strong within me and his peace keep my spirit. Amen