 |
| What our yard looked like a week ago |
“Hear me when I call”
Nothing new has appeared here for many a day, ever since the lazy Floyd River determined to take a lick of our house and left us, well, homeless. It's an altogether strange feeling to be bereft of home. And while we're immensely happy with Dordt U for giving us shelter, I'm on a different computer and I'm not, as the title says, in the basement. The basement is stripped to the studs and drying now, 15 miles east.
I'm thinking maybe just reprinting an old meditation from a personal study I did a decade or more ago may be enough to get the engine going.
This one fits too.
And for the record, many out here in our corner of the country are facing more sadness than we are.
The impatience of the command form in the English language (we might even say its “nerve”) is on display in the very form of the sentence. When we tell others what to do, we deliberately address them last, if at all; subject takes second place to verb, as in “brush your teeth.” Action is obviously far more important than anything else.
“Shut the door,” cares nothing for feelings, simply insists on action. Add a name and things soften a bit, but not much: “Shut the door, Alphonse.” In fact, if we attempt to take the edge off a command and add something endearing, we come up with true phoniness: “shut the door, sweetheart.”
Nothing new has appeared here for many a day, ever since the lazy Floyd River determined to take a lick of our house and left us, well, homeless. It's an altogether strange feeling to be bereft of home. And while we're immensely happy with Dordt U for giving us shelter, I'm on a different computer and I'm not, as the title says, in the basement. The basement is stripped to the studs and drying now, 15 miles east.
The command form happens so often in the Psalms that I think we simply become accustomed to hearing it and forget its lousy manners. My goodness, the Psalmist is talking to the Lord God Almighty here, not some forgetful kid; yet, he’s ordering him around as if he were a valet. “Hear my cry, O Lord,” says the King James. The NIV has “Answer me when I call to you,” which seems, if you ask me, to bring petulance to another level all together.
If the truth be known, most parents scold their children for using the command form too easily. “Give me the toys,” one kid screams, and loving parents do what they can to curb an insolent tongue.
“Insolent,” “impatient,” “petulant”—I’ve used some unpleasant words here so far, but it seems to me that they all fit. The arrogance—we can call it that, I think—of the writer is unmistakable. Simply stated, he’s telling the Lord what to do. “Answer me” doesn’t make the speaker sound like a supplicant.
Of course, grammar be hanged when you’re calling 911. And that’s what appears to be going on here, and elsewhere in the psalms. The writer has arrived at his wit’s end. He can’t cope. He doesn’t have a clue. He’s wasted the last of his best ideas, and there’s nowhere else to turn. Frantic, he forgets his manners and bellers. How else do we explain God’s tolerating this rhetorical blast? Poor guy doesn’t know what the heck to do!
You wonder sometimes whether God Almighty doesn’t actually appreciate being the last port in the storm. Most of us wouldn’t because most of our egos aren’t all that thrilled with being the end of the line. But God seems to like it. Apparently, his feelings aren’t hurt one bit.
I think he likes us emptied. I think he likes us bereft of our own wiles. I think he likes us without resources, nowhere to go, on our knees.
No comments:
Post a Comment