Wait for the Lord
Exercising patience.
The Psalms are a gift to the church and to the life of prayer. It is true that there's plenty of desire for retribution voiced in the Psalms, so one should not pray or read them unreflectively. But there are among the psalms some that magisterially give voice to the cry of our hearts. The Psalm for this week is one such psalm: De profundis clamo ad te Domine, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. I do not think I've yet met anyone who has not cried out to God out of the depths. Like the book of Job, this Psalm invites us to pour out our hearts to God directly, honestly.
The Psalm reads:
1 Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.
2 If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, *
O Lord, who could stand?
3 For there is forgiveness with you; *
therefore you shall be feared.
4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; *
in his word is my hope.
5 My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, *
more than watchmen for the morning.
6 O Israel, wait for the Lord, *
for with the Lord there is mercy;
7 With him there is plenteous redemption, *
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.
Notice, though, that the Psalm turns from one of crying out to God, for with God there is forgiveness, to the theme of waiting. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him;" "my soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning," and to emphasize the point, the line is repeated, "more than watchmen for the morning." We cast our eyes to the horizon, waiting with the desperation and determination of watchmen whose hope is only to make it to the breaking of the light, in which there is safety, in which there is salvation. And the Psalm ends with an exhortation: "O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy; with him there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins."
As we pray this Psalm, we place ourselves in the place of Israel--not the modern nation state, but Israel, God's own people, and we hear ourselves tell ourselves to wait for the Lord.
And when we are in the depths, what does it mean to wait? It is tempting to think of waiting as a merely passive thing--just biding time, until something changes, until something happens. But true waiting, true patience is more like endurance.
Charles Mathewes, in his book A Theology of Public Life, invites us to consider what it means to live as followers of Christ "during the world." He spots the phrase in the will of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who established a chapel with his estate, "that there be said every day, during the Worlde...three masses." Mathewes uses the phrase to talk about the world not so much as a place, but as an era, and our place within it not a place, but a duration, a time. But we are already late: "We are, in the most profound way, belated; everything important to our fates--our sin and our salvation--has already occurred, or at least (in the latter case) has been inaugurated, if not fully accomplished. ...We should understand the world as something fundamentally must endure--not an absolute and unquestioned 'given,' but rather a contingent configuration of reality that will one day pass away." "This," he concludes, "is what the phrase 'during the world' is meant to bring to the fore. It suggests a period, episode, or era--a non-permanent condition, but one inescapable, for now--in which we find ourselves, and which we must live through."
If that's right, to live "during the world" is to wait for the Lord, even as we cry out to God out of the depths. In the book we've been discussing on Wednesdays, Hanna Reichel's For Such a Time as This, Reichel urges that in the Psalms "wait for the Lord" "does not mean 'be inactive,'" but rather, "'do not take revenge.'" It is "a reminder to bind ourselves to God's work of justice. 'Wait for God' means to watch out for God's action in history and participate in it. Not inaction or surrender, but a renewed commitment."
When we find ourselves in despair, in confusion and in the midst of what feels like chaos, we can give in to the discord and get lost in the static, or we can wait for the Lord, turn our eyes, our hearts, our ears not to the loudest voices and the most disturbing, but to the still, small voice, the sound of sheer silence, that echoes in our very souls. We can wait for the Lord, committing ourselves to being God's people, not our own people. We turn in prayer, we turn in contemplation, we turn in song, we turn in acts of mercy and compassion that mirror, however imperfectly, the love, mercy, and compassion of our God.
In the Stephen Schwartz musical, Children of Eden, Cain sings of being lost in the wilderness: And now we're lost in wilderness / Lost,crying in the wilderness / And if anyone's watching it seems they couldn't care less / We're lost wilderness. But by the end of the song, even Cain can look forward in hope: And where we are headed boy, I couldn't guess but / Off we go without a warning / Running as we hit the ground \ Where our future lies a-borning / Where our hearts are outward bound / Till one bright and distant morning / We may stop and look around / And there in the wilderness / Finally we'll be found!
If we find ourselves in the depths, our task is to cry out to God, and to wait for the Lord. When we are in the depths, we recommit ourselves to the one who holds us, during the world, until one bright and distant morning, we may stop and look around, and there in the depths, finally we'll be found!
