Psalm Meditation 1055 Proper 18 September 6, 2020 Psalm 13 1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, 4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 5 But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. (NRSV) There are folks who have a fair weather faith. They are good at being faithful as long as things are going their way. If life gets hard, if things that aren’t supposed to happen to good folks like us happen anyway, if things don’t go according to our plan, they are perfectly willing to say farewell to their faith. They are then free to dispose of the remnants of their faith and go on about their lives with a bitter taste in their mouths around God and the people of God. The psalmist is going through something terrible. On top of that the psalmist feels abandoned by God at the very time when God is most needed. It would be possible, perhaps even understandable, if this was one of those times in which a person walked away from God, feeling as if God was the first to leave. But then, “I trusted in your steadfast love.” What had been a lonely and calamitous time is now made easier by recollecting the presence of God and all the ways that presence makes a difference in a person’s life. We can let the circumstances of our lives beat us down and send us away from God holding our hurts in our bodies and souls, or we can enter the presence of God and lay our hurts out between us. If we keep all this in ourselves we will carry burdens beyond our ability and they will exact a high price from us. If we offer it to God, we will find help in sorting, distributing and carrying our burdens. August 31, 2020 LCM