Defining Moments
But I, Lord, have cried out to You for help, and in the morning my prayer comes before You. Psalm 88:13
Help – English spells it out: “have cried out for help.” But all of that is really a single Hebrew verb— šāwaʿ. “The intensity of the action conveyed by šāwaʿ is aptly illustrated by the fact that the verb occurs only in the Piel. It is used twenty-two times, most often in Ps (ten times) and Job (eight times).” [1]
We might call this verse a defining moment. Perhaps character isn’t determined by the routine choices of living. Perhaps it’s more a matter of what we do in those moments when we are overwhelmed by emotional circumstances. Like Moses when he decided to strike the rock rather than speak to it. That singular moment when the years of anger and frustration got the best of him and changed everything about his hopes and dreams. Perhaps you’ve had a few moments like that. I have.
When I completed my first Master’s degree at seminary in Chicago, I was at the lowest financial point of my life. No job, student loans, an infant at home. I worked as a janitor at night, a security guard during the day and taught a class at a local college. For nine months I was at work nearly twenty hours a day. At the end, I was so tired I couldn’t read a single sentence in a book without forgetting it in the next moment. This led to a defining moment.
We lived in a very small house on the West side of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It was old, not well constructed and full of problems. The space under the house was basically a hole in the dirt where the blocks held up the foundation. The water line from the street came through this space. One day it started leaking. And, of course, there was no money to call a plumber.
I sat in the dark, a single light bulb on the end of a long extension cord casting ghostly shadows around my temporary work area. The galvanized pipe that connected the street supply to the house wasn’t fitting correctly. Over and over, I removed the coupling, refit the pipe and tightened it. Over and over, as soon as I turned on the water pressure at the street supply value, the leak started again. Back and forth, street to dirt hole, hours of trying to fix what seemed like a simple problem. It was just too much. What swept over me was the futility of it all. No money. Hopelessness over the circumstances. A really dark future. I remember crying—just feeling like there would never be an end to this “hole” I was in, this place where all that I really wanted from life was denied on every side. I could taste the powdered eggs from the charity food pantry, the browned lettuce, the stale bread. I felt the weight of being alone down there in the dark, struggling to fix even the simplest problem, a problem that left us without water. I was shaking, a combination of hopelessness and anger, self-pity and self-doubt. Where was God when all I needed was to fix a leak in this god-forsaken place? I remember praying. Actually more like shouting under my breath. A defining moment. The first time I was consciously aware of being abandoned.
Years later this memory is as real a feeling as yesterday’s lunch. Of course, my life has changed. But that moment, the moment of clammy, earthy aloneness has really never left me. It’s back there, somewhere in the subterranean recesses of my mind, reminding me that God didn’t show up—or at least my sense of His presence never arrived.
I know what the psalmist means when he uses šāwaʿ. The simplest little problem was the gateway into spiritual devastation that has haunted me all my life—and still does.
Topical Index: šāwaʿ, cry out for help, defining moment, Psalm 88:13
[1] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2348 שָׁוַע. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 911). Chicago: Moody Press.
