When I
was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands
and
my soul refused to be comforted.
Psalm 77:2
The huge
chandelier in the dining room started swinging and all the kids—we
were at a youth retreat—flew out of their chairs to watch the swimming
pool. Water was sloshing around as if
the pool were little more than a cup of coffee.
The ground shook a bit—I barely remember, really—and inside of twenty
seconds or so, life returned to normal.
The kids sat down and finished their dinner. It was not “the big one.”
My
daughter, who was ten or so, had not moved in all the earthquake hoopla. She’d stayed at our table, eyes as big as
open skies. Some high school kids had
been sitting at our table, and when they came back from watching the pool, they
comforted her.
“Happens
all the time here,” the kids said. “It’s
no big deal.” And then one of said, “You’ve
got tornadoes in Iowa . They’re much worse.” Which likely didn’t help.
That
night, our daughter couldn’t sleep. I
heard her quavering voice when we were in bed. “Dad?”—a single syllable pulled like
taffy into sentence-length.
We were
at a Bible camp, right? I was the
speaker. I left our bed and walked to
where she was sleeping on the floor in the front room of the cottage where we
were staying. “Just pray to Jesus,” I
said. “He’ll listen. We’re not in any trouble—you heard those kids. They were
scared of tornadoes.” Maybe that wasn’t smart.
Ten
minutes later, she called and I told her again, “Just pray, sweetheart.”
Five
minutes later, the same anguished cry. I told her again, more sweetly, to
remember that Jesus was her savior.
Five
minutes later, the same anguished cry. Exasperated, I told her to snap on her
Walkman, and she muttered not a word thereafter.
The anguish
of the story embedded in Psalm 77 is deep, and I don’t want to make light of
it. Picture Asaph, all night long, his hands up, awaiting a blessing that never
comes—no relief, no sleep, no cessation
of horror.
The story
goes on, as we shall see; but because he’s got some distance on that night, he
can look back on himself and his situation with some objectivity and blame
himself, a soul which “refused to be comforted” even though all night long he
was sitting there on crumpled sheets like some Tibetan monk.
Few
psalms take the time to tell as specific a story as Psalm 77. For nine whole verses the poet stays with the
narrative of a single night’s anguish, the whole psalm a particular isolated
testimony.
All of us
are right there with my daughter sometimes, in soul-ful pain for reasons that
are varied and difficult and too complex, maybe, to explain (Asaph doesn’t
either). Last night I slept well. I didn’t sit up, hands raised, expectant. But
I’ve spent nights praying and praying and praying and praying. We all have. If
we haven’t we will.
He may be
right about me too: maybe my soul was refusing comfort, rejecting the fruits of
the spirit. Maybe I needed to read a
book or stick in my earphones.
Testimonies
are lesson plans for our lives, templates by which we bring order to what seems chaos all around.
Psalm 77 is Asaph’s testimony. Here’s what happened, he says, in every last
jarring detail. But he can tell the story only because it’s over; it’s in the
past. It’s what happened. Past tense. The
inherent pledge of a testimony is that it can happen to us too.
And it
does. Sometimes we can’t hear. Sometimes we can’t listen. Sometimes there is
just too much chaos. Sometimes our souls refuse comfort.
Open me
up, Lord. In my distress, unlock my soul.
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