Hear me

Hear me

Psalm 116:1-4 Common English Bible (CEB)

I love the Lord because he hears
    my requests for mercy.

2 I’ll call out to him as long as I live,
    because he listens closely to me.

3 Death’s ropes bound me;
    the distress of the grave found me—
    I came face-to-face with trouble and grief.

4 So I called on the Lord’s name:
    “Lord, please save me!”

In a recent article in Time magazine, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright discusses our very real feelings of loss and uncertainty in the face of Covid-19.  Humans, he noted, have a great desire to know why things happen. We want to know why we suffer and we want to know there will be a happy ending.  But sometimes, he said, there is no rational answer.  There is no promise of a happy ending.  At times like this we would do well to embrace “the biblical tradition of lament.  Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer.” ( https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/ ). Sometimes we must turn to the psalms for a way to understand how to get through difficulties.  

One of the first suggestions we are given when we ask for scripture verses that will comfort us in times of trouble is to read the Psalms.  I certainly got that advice, although at first I found it not helpful at all.  I went to my pastor and told her that reading all that happy happy joy joy stuff in the psalms just made me feel worse. That’s when she told me that there are other psalms that are not so happy, in which the psalmist cries out against God in anger.  In some of them everything turns out well in the end.  Others begin well, but end in pain and anguish.  Still others, like Psalm 137 - my personal favorite - are cries of depression and rage all the way through.    This was helpful.  What a blessing it was to learn that it is ok to question God, to say out loud that we are angry with God, to seek answers from God and come away with none.  

Today’s reading is not exactly a lament.  It is, however, a statement of hope and faith.  No matter what, when I come face to face with trouble and grief, I know I can call upon God, “because he listens closely to me”.  I may not get the answers I want. I may not be told that there will be a happy ending.  But I will be listened to.  God will hear my cries and my questions.  And sometimes that’s all we need - just to be listened to.

When have you needed someone to just listen to what you were saying?