1 Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger;
     do not discipline me in Your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, Lord, for I am weak;
     heal me, Lord, for my bones are shaking;
3 my whole being is shaken with terror.
     And You, Lord—how long?

In 2018 I spent some interesting time in a hospital, though less interesting after they stopped the morphine so that I could quit hallucinating. I wasn’t a good psalmist: I don’t respond to pain with passionate outcryings. I think many of us don’t, and it’s probably a cultural difference. It appears that the Psalms came out of a culture that valued and encouraged “outcryings” such as “my whole being (more literally ‘soul,’ as in most translations) is shaken with terror” and like the prayer that interrupts itself to jump straight from invocation to anguished cry: “You, Lord—how long?” Most of us aren’t like that. And besides, if I had cried out, it would’ve sent the pain up through the roof.

4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
     save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
     in Sheol who will give you praise?

Sheol is, by the way, where you go after you die, according to the Old Testament. The prayer here argues to God: “You may as well save my life since I’ll be of no use to you once I’m dead.” But with the New Testament in our hands (along with a handful of hints in the Old Testament) we can no longer use that argument. We know that praise will be given by each of God’s people after this present life is over. That difference between the Old Testament and us makes a difference in how we pray during illness, and in how I (for instance) pray once I have entered that demographic where no one will be terribly shocked if I fall over dead one day. Perhaps knowing about resurrection and eternal life allows us to be more realistic about death.

8 Depart from me, all evildoers,
     for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea for help;
     the Lord accepts my prayer.

This brings to mind a story about a dead man who got up during his own wake to chase out the family because they were, as is traditional in some cultures, arguing during the wake about who would get what of the old man’s possessions. But no, there’s no joking here. There is, rather, a serious and glad lesson here that already in the midst of the sick and harassed believer’s prayer, he or she can express confidence in the God who listens.

• Psalm 6 is quoted here from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.
• 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.