Singing Through Sorrows
August 9, 2019Psalms chapters 3-7 contain a consistent theme of being oppressed, persecuted, and suffering.
We have seen how to seek the Lord as we face anxious days and trust him through the night. We have learned more about praying not around our sorrows, or in between our sorrows, but through them. We have seen in each of these Psalms wthe importance of calling upon the Lord in every season of the soul.
Before we turn the page from this little section of the Psalms and move on to the joyful praise of Psalm 8, I wanted us to think once more what we have seen in these first chapters. Old Testament scholar Alec Motyer helps summarize it well.
Of the fifty-five verses in these psalms, about fifteen are devoted to enemies and their threat, but about thirty to truths, thoughts of God and descriptions of prayer and praise. In whatever form trouble comes - the hostility of others, circumstantial problems and tragedies, personal sorrows - its tendency is to drive us inward, to make us ‘retire hurt’, urge us to find some corner in which to moan over our lot, marvel how unfair life is, ‘chew the fat’ of our own misery!
David is too practical to say ‘forget your problems.’ Neither his nor our difficulties are negligible or inconsequential. No, don’t try to forget them, but rather face and describe them - as these psalms do. The vague is so often more alarming than what is candidly and specifically faced. But always outweigh the problems, hurts, sorrows - whatever - by the great truths about the Lord, and by the practice of prayer and praise."(1)
I hope we have been taught, encouraged, and equipped through these Psalms, and are better equipped as a disciple of Christ to keep looking to the Lord on this journey of faith.
(1) Alec Motyer, Psalms By the Day: A New Devotional Translation Geanies House: Christian Focus, 2016), 24.