Sunday Devotional: Psalm 13

Sometimes despite all we know about the Lord ... or however close to Him we’ve been ... there will be a time and a place where we feel like He’s just bailed on us. If it happened to the one God called a man after His own heart, we can be sure we aren’t immune.

Some of us know already that this can happen, because we’ve walked through it.

Some of us are walking through it right now.

Psalm 13 (NKJV) – A Psalm of David

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?

How long will You hide Your face from me?

²How long shall I take counsel in my soul,

Having sorrow in my heart daily?

How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Because that’s exactly what it feels like, even to those of us who have the benefit of the full canon of Scripture. Who know that He’s promised to never leave us or forsake us ... and come to think, that’s exactly why He gave us that promise.

Does He ever get tired of us crying out to Him, I wonder? I think ... not. Why else would He have included prayers like this one in His word?

³Consider and hear me, O Lord my God;

Enlighten my eyes,

Lest I sleep the sleep of death;

⁴Lest my enemy say,

“I have prevailed against him”;

Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

This is flat-on-your-face desperation here, not a calm and pretty poem. One gets the feeling that with some Psalms, David spent a lot of time shaping and sculpting his words ... but others, like this one, were hurled down in all their messy, emotional glory.

And then, from the depths, a seedling of hope always rises.

⁵But I have trusted in Your mercy;

My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.

⁶I will sing to the Lord,

Because He has dealt bountifully with me.

I’ve heard it said at even the bleakest and most despairing of Psalms end with some sort of reminder of God’s care. This one is no exception. Even when David was sure God had abandoned him, he still trusted Him.

But how can that be? How can we continue to trust God in circumstances that crush the life out of us?

It happens when, like David, we know God’s mercy will prevail—when we understand that His salvation is all encompassing. When we look back and see that there’s never been a situation that He didn’t change—or redeem.

And if He hasn’t yet, if it seems like He’s forgotten us, we can be sure that His mercy is still in force, and redemption will come.