While we’re reading psalms of lament (such as Psalms 3–7 and 10–14) we may as well look in on Elijah, the lamenting prophet. It is in the midst of miracles demonstrating God’s power and concern for his people and for the prophet himself (1 Kings 17:2–6, 8–16, 17–22; 18:19–45; 19:5–6) that Elijah raises his lament, or, as we might say in our own language, he was moaning and complaining. Elijah loved the worship of the true God of Israel and, faced by opposition to that God from the political and religious powers, he says “I’m the only one left!” (18:22; 19:4, 10, 14). God’s response to the prophet had two points. Taking them in reverse order: (2) “No, you’re not. There are others” (19:18–21). (1) “I have plans, and they involve you” (19:15–17).
The psalms of lament do something similar, though with considerably less spectacle than we see in Elijah’s story. We see in these psalms the praying person who is accused, sick, alone, abused, threatened, or surrounded by sinners, and we hear that person complaining about it and then trying to remind himself or herself—not that things are not so bad after all—but that there is reason for hope in the middle of a very real and very bad situation.
It is not easy to find that hope, and sometimes, it seems, it is hard to give hope a specific name. If you’re waiting for your ship to come in, it’s nice to have a time table and a wharf number so that you can meet it, but life doesn’t always give such certainty. In Psalm 14, for example, a person surrounded by “evildoers
who eat up my people,” has to begin the statement of hope with a vague “there” or “when” or “then,” depending on which translation you’re looking at, and then little more is said except that God is on the side of the righteous (Psalm 14:5–6).
So if you’re listening to the psalmist or watching Elijah with personal interest, because you are yourself one who is accused, sick, alone, abused, or whatever, and you want to hear the answers grasped by those biblical people, then know that sometimes all you are given is that God is present and that he answers faith with salvation. Everything else that might be said about your hope is, and indeed has to be, taken away so that faith is in nothing but that God. As in one of those silly but true old pious sayings, “I know my ship’s coming in. I don’t know when or where or the name on the bow, but I know who the captain is.”
- These posts on the Psalms are in aid of the reading of the Psalms—one a day through the first five months of 2022—by members, attenders, friends, et al. of Together Church, Wyoming, MI.
The One Story 