Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Psalm 45 brings an interesting change of pace to the psalms. It’s not another poem about enemies or depression or God’s failure to help. It’s a joyful wedding song!

The king is the groom, and the psalm uses God-language to describe him. Listen as the psalm celebrates the king: 
    Gird your sword on your side, you mighty one;
      Clothe yourself with splendour and majesty (v. 3).
    Let your sharp arrows piece the hearts of the king’s enemies;
        let the nations fall beneath your feet.
    Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
        a sceptre of justice is the scepter of your kingdom.
    Because you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
        therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
        by anointing you with the oil of joy (vv. 5-7).

Did you hear that? “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Is this king, clothed with splendor and majesty, ruling over the nations, a divine king? Is he a God-man?  Some translators avoid this implication by rendering it, “Your throne of God” or “from God” (Alter, Robert. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007), emphasizing the king’s role as a representative of God. The New International Version I use has a footnote to explain that the poet doesn’t really mean it the way it comes out sounding. The author of Hebrews quotes this passage as a reference to Jesus, the Son of God (Heb 1:8-9). 

I can only say that, compared with the Psalms, we are far too reserved and far too technically correct in the praise we give. The Israelites had a great advantage, viewing the king as God’s representative and God’s gift to the nation. A majestic and powerful and wise king gave hope and the promise of security and a vision of God’s love and justice to the people. 

About the bride, the poet sings:
  All glorious is the princess within her chamber;
      her gown is interwoven with gold.
  In embroidered garments she is led to the king;
      he virgin companions follow her. . .
  Led in with joy and gladness,
    they enter the palace of the king.
  Your sons will take the place of your fathers;
      you will make them princes throughout the land (vv. 13-16). 

This reminds me of the wedding ceremony for Princess Diana and Charles, Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne. It was a storybook wedding with a handsome prince and a beautiful princess. The United Kingdom  declared a bank holiday, and 750 million people watched the wedding vows on television. More recently, the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle also had a large television audience. Our modern world still loves a well-staged royal wedding that lifts us from our lives of drudgery and pain to a vision of romance and beauty. 

Let’s pray. 

Lord, help us not sink into cynicism and despair about the politics and marriages of our time. At its best, a strong king and a royal wedding remind us of our ideals. They remind us that you govern the world through your representatives, and they remind us of the hope and beauty in a union between man and woman. 

And we understand, as the poet did, that disaster is not far when kings and rulers become arrogant and corrupt, and when marriages, even among royalty, sink into dysfunction and infidelity. 

Protect our governments, Lord, protect our marriages. And bring us at last to the marriage supper of the Lamb, to that grand and joyful ceremony where you will establish good government and faithful relationships forever. 

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Psalm 44 presents the most spectacular, the most visceral, the most vigorous criticism of God in the Psalms so far. 

The poet begins subtly enough, with an account of how God helped Israel on their journey to the promised land, driving out the nations before them (v. 1), crushing the inhabitants (v. 2), planting the Israelite ancestors on the land and making them flourish. The poet says it was not the military skill of the army that achieved this –the victory was a gift of God’s love, won by God’s skill and God’s strength (v. 3). 

The poet says that it works the same way in his day:
    You are my King and my God
        who decrees victories…;
    Through you we push back our enemies;
      I put no trust in my bow,
        my sword does not bring me victory;
      You, God give us victory over our enemies  (vv. 4-8). 

That’s an unbeatable military arrangement–God loves his people and helps them win battles. The poet feels this is the expected outcome of the covenant between God and Israel: Israel worships God and follows his laws, and God supports his people, giving them success in everything they do. 

But the poet doesn’t end on this positive note. His army has recently suffered a humiliating military defeat, and he is looking for someone to blame. He says to God:
    You have rejected and humbled us (v. 9).
    You made us retreat before the enemy (v. 10).
    You gave us up to be devoured like sheep (v. 11).
    You sold your people for a pittance (v. 12).
    You make us a reproach to our neighbours (v. 13). 
     You crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals (v. 19). 

The God who used to help them did not show up for this battle. Surprisingly, he was not even an impartial observer. He was an active participant in the defeat. He rejected, abandoned, and sold them to their enemies.  Why did he unexpectedly quit helping them? Why did he turn traitor and hand them over to their enemies? Did he forget his covenant with Israel?

But in the end, the poet turns to this God who failed him, who turned traitor against him. He asks God to resume honoring the covenant, praying:
    Do not reject us forever (v. 23)
    Rise up and help us;
      Rescue us because of your unfailing love (v. 26). 

Let’s pray. 

God, you have a covenant with us too. You adopted us into your family. You feed us with living water. You give us true bread to eat. We feel your great love for us. We have have built our lives on this covenant relationship.

But now things have gone wrong–our children have rejected you, our church is stuck in painful arguments, some of us are unemployed, depression and cancer haunt our days, we face demons of fear and anxiety within.

Where are you when we need you God? Why are we sinking into the pit again? When St. Teresa of Avila was on a dangerous journey she said, “God, why do you keep putting obstacles in our way?” You replied, “I always treat my friends like this.” And Teresa responded, “Ah Lord, that must be why you have so few of them.”  https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/st-teresa-of-avila-if-this-is-how-you-treat-your-friends/

Ah Lord, we are with St. Teresa. We are with the poet. No wonder you have so few friends. But we remember your covenant with us. We press on past your failure to help us, past your indifference, past the obstacles you set in our way. We still claim you as our God, we still know we are your children. O Lord, we expect you to treat your children better than this. Now would be a good time to start. Rescue us because of your unfailing love.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Instead of presenting Psalm 43 as a separate Psalm, many Hebrew Bibles position it as as the last stanza of Psalm 42. However,  since I use an English Bible, I use the English numbering so I don’t confuse myself. 

In this psalm, it looks like the poet is in exile. Enemies drove him from his Jerusalem home to the remote countryside. He opens with a request that God plead his case against his enemies. I like that picture of God–a personal injury lawyer suing my enemies for damages.

The poet goes on to describe his experience and ask God to help him. He says,
    You are God my stronghold,
        Why have you rejected me?
  Why must I go about in gloom,
        oppressed by my enemies?
  Send me your light and your truth,
  Let them bring me to your holy mountain,
      to the place where you dwell. 

God is supposed to be his stronghold, his protector, his light. But he complains that God has rejected him, consigning him to darkness and gloom, making him an easy target for his enemies. He asks God to send him light and truth so he can find his way to the temple where God dwells, and to the community of worshippers who gather there. Then he will worship God joyfully with music and song. 

He concludes by repeating his refrain from Psalm 42,
    Why are you downcast, my soul,
      Why so disturbed within me?
    Hope in God,
      For I will yet praise him,
      My Savior and my God. 

Let’s pray. 

God, with the poet, we want you to be our personal injury lawyer. Where we have been the unfair subject of legal battles—business lawsuits, divorce proceedings, custody battles, accident claims, and other unjust actions—we turn the file over to you. Drag our enemies into court, sue them for everything they have, save us from their unjust claims. Where we have been victims of personal relationship failures—where people have not respected our boundaries, where family have been angry without reason, where parents have failed us, where siblings distrusted us—we invite you to protect us, to come to our defense, to overthrow the false claims, to stop the manipulation and control, to expose the lies and deceit. 

God, we join the poet in asking you to be our light and our truth. We have walked long years in darkness, in valleys of sickness and poverty, doubting often that you care, and sometimes that you exist. We have tried to live by the power of positive thinking, or by the strength of despair, by the light of human wisdom, or by escape into fantasy. But all these have failed us, and we return empty handed to you. Send your light, send your truth. Let them lead us. Let them bring us to the pace where you dwell. 

    Why are you downcast, my soul,
      Why so disturbed within me?
    Hope in God,
      For I will yet praise him,
      My Savior and my God. 

What is hope but waiting patiently, expecting you to act?  Accept our patient waiting, God. We are the deer panting for your water. We are the swimmers, pummeled and washed in your waves. We are victims, harassed by our feelings of darkness, beaten by our enemies. But we wait for you and we hope in you. Rescue us, save us. Bring us soon to your house, where we will worship joyfully in your presence. 

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

I first looked at Psalm 42 when I was in my early twenties, thanks to the book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1964) by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones. At the time, I was looking for solutions to depression, loneliness, and introversion. In the first chapter, imaginatively titled “General Consideration”, Lloyd-Jones said, “[Psalm 42 gives] an extraordinarily accurate picture of spiritual depression. You can see the man looking cast down and dejected.” You see that drawn, haggard, vexed, troubled appearance (Lloyd-Jones, p. 13). At that point, for better or worse, I was hooked on the book and on Psalm 42. 

Three aspects of the psalm spoke to me. 

First, the poet describes his depression.  His emotional experience is turmoil, confusion, despair. Twice he says,
Why are you downcast, my soul,
  Why so disturbed within me? (vv. 5, 11)

His spiritual experience is also in disarray. He says his tears have been his food day and night, and people keep asking, “Where is your God?” (v. 3). In his sadness he says to God, “Why have you forgotten me?” (v. 9).

The poet’s social experience is a disaster too. He continues: 
“Why must I go about mourning,
  oppressed by the enemy?” (v. 9).
The poet’s friends and enemies both say, “Clearly, God is not showing up to help you,” (vv. 3, 10) and his own soul echoes the question, “Have you forgotten me, God?” (v. 9) and “When can I go and meet God?” (v. 2). This is the poet’s depression: lonely, troubled, taunted by enemies, no help from his friends, his thoughts and life in turmoil, his relationship with God non-existent. 

A second part of the psalm that spoke to me is the poet’s surprising awareness of things that encourage and give him hope. He starts the poem with an amazing upward and outward picture:
As the deer pants for streams of water,
So my soul pants for you, my God (v. 1).
His depression is not only a dark, inescapable pit. It is also a thirst, thirst for God. Perhaps God will give him a drink of water if he asks.

Later he says to God,
Deep calls to deep
            In the roar of your waterfalls
All your waves and your breakers
have gone over me (v. 7).
The poet feels himself drowning, but he hears God’s voice in the waters, “Deep calls to deep” (v. 7). In his trouble and depression, he feels God’s waterfall speaking to him, God’s waves washing over him. It seems God is both the storm that drowns him and the water that saves him. 

The third thing I found helpful in Psalm 42 is how the poet manages his depression. He manages it by talking to himself! Perhaps that’s a skill I need to learn. When the poet’s dark feelings talk to him, he talks right back to them with a different message. He doesn’t submit to feelings hopelessness, he doesn’t sink into despair. He questions his feelings, he questions himself, he redirects the conversation.
Why are your downcast, my soul,
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God. (vv. 5, 11). 

The poet also speaks to God, questioning God’s silence.
I will say to God my rock
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning?” (v. 9).

The wonderful message of this psalm is that when our experience is dark, when God seems silent and uninterested, we can still talk to him. We can invite him into our darkness, we can call on him to resume caring for us. 

Let’s pray.  

Our Father, so often in the psalms we have been stuck in the pit of despair, our feet lodged in mud, our mind imprisoned in darkness. But today’s psalm brings the language of hope to our prison. Perhaps our unquenchable thirst is our heart panting after you. Perhaps our feeling of drowning is your waves and your breakers washing over us. Perhaps our painful and vulnerable situation can be addressed to you, “God, you are my rock, why do you let my feet slip and my enemies harass?”

With the psalm we say,
  By day the Lord directs his love
at night his song is with me (v. 8).

And with the poet we pray,
  Why are you downcast my soul?
  Put your hope in God
  for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God (v. 11).  

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Psalm 41 describes the poet’s near-death experience. People came and went from his sick room, spreading rumors and waiting for him to die. His enemies said, 
   A vile disease has afflicted him,  
       he will never get up from his sickbed (v. 8). 

His friends also turned against him. He says,
  Even my best friend, who I trusted,
      who regularly ate meals with me,
        has become utterly devious (v. 8). 

This reminds me of a scene from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. As Peter Featherstone was dying upstairs in his bedroom, friends and relatives gathered downstairs, calculating how much they might inherit, eating his food and waiting for his death. He surprised everyone with a stingy will. 

In Psalm 41, those waiting for the poet’s death make us think of Jesus preparing for his death. At the Last Supper, as Jesus ate and drank with his disciples, Judas had arranged to make some money from Jesus’ misfortune. Jesus quoted verse 8 from today’s psalm: “He who shared my bread has turned against me” (John 13:8). 

Let’s pray. 

Jesus, we too have enemies who laugh and gossip at our predicaments, waiting for us to fail. Sometimes they are people we know, sometimes our own anxious thoughts. We have friends who abandoned us when our life fell apart.. We have been ditched unexpectedly by a boyfriend or girlfriend. Life has not turned out as we imagined it. Circumstances are not as we planned. Our bodies have grown sick, our businesses have failed, our finances have crashed, and our lives have gone into the pit. 

Amid these difficulties, we discovered who our true friends were. Some were embarrassed by our failures and deleted our contact information. Some couldn’t handle our sorrow, so they stayed away. Some didn’t like hospital, so they didn’t visit. Others were too busy being positive to care about our negative experiences.

Judas was unfaithful to you, Jesus. Why didn’t you fire him when he stole your money and negotiated your betrayal? Had you not read popular psychology books that tell us to avoid negatively focused people, and to terminate toxic relationships? Like you, Jesus, we too have complex relationships. We are not sure when to press on in a spirit of tolerance and forgiveness, when to confront and ask people to change, or when to terminate a relationship gone wrong. 

In our painful relationships, we follow the poet’s example. When enemies mock and friends abandon, we choose not to suppress our pain and disappointment. We express it to you. With the poet we look for your goodness and faithfulness, saying: 
     Blessed are those who have regard for the weak, 
  The Lord sustains them on their sick-bed
     and restores them from their bed of illness.

Yes, Jesus, you look after us when we are weak and sick and forsaken. Seek us when we are hurt and helpless and alone. You are not afraid of the powerless and the dysfunctional and the dirty and the dispossessed. As the poet says,
    Because of my integrity you uphold me
        and set me in your presence forever. 

Yes, Jesus, that is what we want. Uphold us in our weakness, bring us into your presence forever. And help us be faithful to our friends when they are weak and helpless.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.