Psalm 31:9-10, 14, 19 (NIV)
Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you, that you bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in you.
I love the rawness and honesty of David throughout the psalms. He was a man that was not afraid to pour out his heart to the Lord…but he was also a man with a good memory. David had experienced God in numerous ways throughout his life and had come to a point of deep and abiding faith, yet he was willing to admit when he was struggling and despondent. Terrified and anxious. Overwhelmed and clueless.
David’s mood swings show up in most of his psalms as he moves from valley to mountaintop and then from the mountaintop back down to the valley. He was a man that wrestled with the tension between the difficulties of his life and the declarations of his faith. Setting aside his wealth and position and all that went with them…David was actually a pretty common follower of God, struggling to live out his faith in a deeply broken world. Sometimes his troubles came from without…and sometimes they came from within. The Enduring Word study of Psalms comments that, “We have no definite marking place in David’s life for this Psalm because he was so often in trouble. It resonates with deep and personal trust in God in the depths of difficulty.”
Another interesting aspect of the psalms, and this one in particular, is that most were meant to be sung publicly. Imagine seeing this up on the screen this coming Sunday as the congregation is called to join in and sing, “I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief.” Yeah…probably not going to happen. There is much talk about victory and freedom and the breaking of strongholds, and there should be, but where are the gut-wrenching cries of despair and frustration and fear? God has not given us a spirit of fear, of course, but that doesn’t mean we don’t struggle with it. And while most of us tend to internalize these struggles and/or allow them to manifest in unhealthy ways, David was willing to cry out to God with them, write some of them down, and then share some of them with his people. Oh, that our modern-day experience should be so communal!
Finally, and most importantly, David always comes back to his faith and remembers how God had delivered him in the past. However great David’s troubles were, his trust in God was even greater. He did not ignore his problems, but would not dwell on them, either. He understood that Yahweh was his God (v. 14) and therefore greater than all his trouble. Cicero said David’s proclamation of “You are my God” has “more sweetness in it than any other utterance which human speech can frame.” Every follower of Christ needs to remember that David’s God is their God. The God of the Bible is the God of your daily life and mine. Stop and remember what He has brought you through…and choose to trust that His faithfulness and love will overcome every valley in your life and eventually bring you to a mountaintop that has no end.
