Week 2 Psalm 13
This psalm got more interesting for me when I realized it was giving me a prototype of Where Do I Land When Things Are Terrible?
David’s situation in the first four verses is this: BAD.
Q: what is his reaction-response to that bad situation?
A: But I trust in God’s unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.
I read this and my concern is: how does David get from verses 1-2-3-4 to verses 5-6? It’s a huge jump. I’m perplexed by it. My big wish is that David would have added a footnote…something like: And This Is How I Made This Difficult Transition! But he doesn’t.
His point here is not: How You Can Get from verses 1-2-3-4 to verses 5-6. David’s more basic point is: You Need To Go from verses 1-2-3-4 to verses 5-6.
Which I suppose is useful too. When a guy gets into a very seriously bad jam – a psalm 13-type jam – his immediate reaction might – for instance – be: God stinks. I hate God. Where is God? God is the devil. He’s a worthless useless apathetic terrible screw-around God. Like that. But David’s reaction – the Lord has been good to me – is completely counter-intuitive.
His simple advisory is: if you find yourself in Bad Situation X then the terminal point has to be Trusting-the-Lord Situation Y. (Exactly how you get there is a question for another day.)
Note: quote from Psalm 13:5-6 (NIV)