Psalm 13:1-6 "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? ... But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me."

Psalms like this one surprise me. How can David go from one extreme to the other in so few verses? How does he change from feeling shut out to praising God in so short a span? I understand the beginning, and I understand the end - what about the middle?

I understand the beginning. Trouble can be like a curtain which hides God’s face from us. We feel like his loving gaze of approval is blocked by the difficulty. The longer it lasts, the more it feels like God has pulled the drapes to shut us out.

I understand the end. God is good and music gives expression to my feelings and worship. I love to sing and play my guitar. There are times I drive Jan nuts because, while I sing and play well enough, my timing is not always best for everyone else in the house.

Again, it’s the middle that is harder to understand. Most times it feels like it can only be one or the other, and when times are especially hard we have trouble seeing anything else. "Will you forget me forever?"

One temptation I face is for the pendulum of my emotions is to get stuck here, to believe that life is a series of bad times interrupted occasionally by good. Little things that go wrong are signs of bigger, badder, things about to happen. Life will never be any better. Wait a little while - maybe it’ll get worse.

I don’t think I ride this bus alone. If you greet people with, "Nice day today," someone will reply, "Yeah, but its gonna rain tomorrow." This is the side of me I don’t like for others to see. People know me as sunny, bright, optimistic. I tend to hide away when my mood turns darker.

The middle period between "life stinks" and "praise God from whom all blessings flow..." is hard to understand if our trust in God is based on how well we think life is going at the time. Its easy to trust God when the going is easy. We begin to doubt God’s goodness when the path gets bumpy, the rocks and roots trip us, and the burdens on our back increase.

David looked at it differently. Don’t ever doubt that life was tough when he wrote this psalm, but he trusted God despite his feelings (v.1), despite his thoughts (v.2), despite the enemies he faced (vv. 2-4).

In other words, there really is no middle to understand. We think there is a middle because we see it as one way or the other. Not so with David. In all of life’s difficulties, he looks to God for improvement because he knows God is good and will grant hope. He does not look for light in the circumstances - he sees it in God. Take a look at verse 3: " Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death."

The bottom line is that faith in Christ means better days ahead. Life may not look that way. But the eyes of faith see hope in God’s goodness and love, not in what life throws our way.

I hope this helps. Be OnFire,

Troy

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ON FIRE is a weekly letter of encouragement by Troy Dennis. This letter published June 13, 2006.