Start the Climb

“1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; 4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. (Psalm 13:1-6 NIV).

“How long O Lord?” is the cry of many a heat. The New Living Translation renders verse 2: “2 How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?

Too often we forget that the great hero’s of faith had the same clay feet as us. They have the same ups and downs, the same fears and concerns, the same joys and victories. Unlike the false counsel of Job’s friends and a host of false teachers today, we must remember and recognize that God’s righteous people do suffer in this fallen world and no matter how much the hope we have is, the fact is the suffering still hurts!

David understood such suffering. We don’t know when this Psalm was written. Was it early in his life, when, after receiving God’s promise of coronation as king he found himself running for his life from Saul? Certainly that was a dark period (an extended period) in his life.

Perhaps he wrote these words while suffering the guilt and punishment of his own sin with Bathsheba. That certainly was a dark period in his life.

Or maybe these words were penned when he was running for his life from his own son Absalom who decided that his father was no longer fit to rule Israel and staged his ill-fated coup.

We don’t know when David wrote these words, but we do feel the anguish of soul expressed in this Psalm. It seems at times that evil and suffering go unchecked at times and we wonder what God is doing; we wonder why He doesn’t act; why He is so deafeningly silent. Your feelings are not new. David felt them and expressed them. The fact that they are recorded in our Bible is testimony to the fact that God wanted them there, that they are more than the anguished thoughts of a distraught mind but the inspired words of God given to instruct us. I have learned from words such as these and experience that God is not afraid of our questions, though we may be reticent to accept His answers.

Whatever the circumstances were that occasioned this pleaful Psalm, my eyes and heart are drawn to those last two verses, “5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” David is hurting. He has expressed his hurt more eloquently than I could ever hope. But David decided that he would not focus on the dumps he was in, he chose to trust that the God of unfailing love knew what he was doing.

I don’t know what you may be going through today but you have a choice to make. You can either dwell on your sorrow or you can feast on His goodness. That is a choice. You can either wallow in the valley of pity and become bitter or you can climb the mountain of praise and become better. But please note carefully that last sentence. Mountain climbing is not easy, it is an uphill journey! Those who have climbed mountains know that at times you cling to the side of the mountain literally by your fingertips! Don’t think that deciding to praise in pain is going to solve the problem instantly. It won’t. God has much to teach you. The question is, will you stay where you are, or will you, with David ,start the climb?