Embracing our weariness

 

Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame. Psalms 6 ESV

            This is a short psalm, a short prayer. A prayer and a song asking for help in a time of weariness and weakness ought to be short. It is also honest. We might expect the king to keep such moments as this private, instead David under inspiration set his confession and his cry to music for the whole congregation to sing together. Why wouldn’t he set this to music? Why wouldn’t God’s people have a song such as this?

            That we grow faint is an undeniable fact. That we weary in this world, and of this world is plain to all. Our need for rest is built into the creation. Night time was made on the first day, and was made to draw us to rest. God set us an example by resting Himself on the first sabbath, made for man not man for sabbath, so that we also dedicate that day to rest: God needs no rest. Our God is Lord of the sabbath, the God of rest. He gives us rest in every conceivable way. Now we might turn and labor on this point to describe every way our Lord gives us rest; but all of this a useless gesture if we do not confess our need for rest in spirit and in truth.

             The closing of the psalm announces the answer to David plea, the new and better David well and truly fulfills this announcement to the fullest extent conquering and subjecting our truest and oldest and deadliest foe forever. It is already done, even as David realizes, but it is not yet manifested fully. The creation still groans, and so do we as our enemies continue to wage their hopeless war, and we still toil under the futility of the curse. What then shall we give in and give up? By no means for our hope is sure, and our day of rest is coming soon. Shall we hide our weariness, and our fainting, and our weeping? By no means, for we know all these things and to deny this would be folly. Instead let us embrace our moment of weakness, or weariness, and of fainting, and of weeping confessing them as they are before God and before men so that we might also embrace the rest that is and shall be ours by the grace of God.

Prayer

            Father give us rest as we have need. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Song

Weary of Earth, myself, and sin (I recommend the version by Red Mountain Church)

               

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