Will You Forget Me Forever?
“How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” Psalm 13:1-2
How did these verses get in the Bible? How are they inspired by the Holy Spirit? How were they part of Jewish liturgy and prayer? Why have the been incorporated as part of Christian worship for the entire history of the church? How are these words remotely Christian?
Interesting questions regarding an even more interesting set of verses. It is remarkable that these verses stand as they are in the Biblical text. They are not followed by a rebuke our a denunciation for a bad confession. They are not followed by a discourse on the omniscience of God to correct the obviously true fact that God cannot and does not forget us. Neither are they set forth as an example of someone wavering in faith as if they had a long way to grow in trusting God. Rather this text is in a collection of songs to be sung in the regular worship of the people of God. Possibly even more striking is that this text is not alone in the book of Psalms but is one among many like it with its climax possibly being Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” Rather than corrected with qualifications, these verses and the cries that they express in the heart of every human being are left to stand.
The Holy Spirit and the compilers of the canon deemed it fit that these words were important for the life of the people of God throughout the ages. However, at times we run across the attitude of “trust” and “faith” in God, in which one is confident that everything is turning out the way God wanted it and everything is working out the best possible way and thus we can be at peace. This faith seems to overshoot the faith of the Biblical witness itself and almost seems like “trusting God too much.” The Psalmist here and in other places apparently recognized that everything was not turning out the best possible way and in a sense perceived her god-forsaken status in the fallen world.
How can these prayers be ours as Christians who affirm the tender-hearted and tenaciously faithful love of the all-powerful God? Is there room for the recognition of our god-forsakenness without all the qualifiers immediately rushing in? How can we as believers in the promise of God express our pain and grief over the apparent non-fulfillment of the promise and the radical disconjunction between what we hope for and what we know should be? Every prayer we offer screams of this gut-wrenching, painful contradiction between what we believe God to be like and what we experience as reality in the world. Is the problem truly just in our perspective? If we understood from God’s perspective would that make all of our pain an unmixed blessing? Not many answers on this end, just a conviction that I want the real me – the perplexed, in pain, aware of my shortcomings me to know God and what He is like. I don’t want the “me” with no problems and everything is working out great to believe that God loves me and is faithful towards me. I want the isolated, god-forsaken, broken, longing-for-something-beyond me to glance outside my shell and somehow learn to trust and hope in a God who loves and delights in me.
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Comment from Ashley Wallis
Time: September 26, 2009, 9:52 pm
This is really helping me. I have been feeling this way, the way David expressed in the psalms and even Jesus expressed on the cross, but have not known how to reconcile it with the belief that God never forsakes us. I don’t have much else to say… just that this is good.