No Aspirins, Please

My voice to God—let me cry out.  My voice to God—and hearken to me.  In the day of my straits I sought the Master.  My eye flows at night, it will not stop.  I refused to be consoled.  Psalm 77:2-3  (Hebrew Bible) Robert Alter

Refused – “You’ll feel better in the morning.”  “This too will pass.”  “Just give it some time.”  All words of useless advice.  When you’re hurting, “Pollyanna comfort” doesn’t help.  What you want is the pain to go away—now!  When my knee was so sore I couldn’t walk or stand, when I had 24-hours-a-day agony, it didn’t make much difference for someone to tell me that eventually things would get better.  It might have been true (and, in fact, it was) but that didn’t help in the midst of the suffering.  And anyone who faces the reality of human existence would refuse to accept such pablum.  Don’t offer me a remedy tomorrow.  Let me deal with today—head-on, straightforward, in the face of evil.

So Asaph uses the strongest word possible, māʾēn, a word that carries with it some drastic history.  “Especially significant are those occasions when Pharaoh (Ex 4:23; 7:14; 10:3) or Israel refused to obey God’s commands. They simply ‘refused to walk in [God’s] law’ (Ps 78:10). Israel also refused to repent (Hos 11:5; Jer 3:3; 8:5) or to receive instruction (Jer 5:3; 9:6 [H 5]; 11:10; Zech 7:11). Only once is God ever said to have refused: he refused to give Balaam permission to curse Israel (Num 22:13).”^[1]  Asaph chooses a word that slaps you across the face.  It’s laced with overtones of disobedience before God.  It’s a terrifying word.

But terrified is precisely where I must be if I’m only willing to have God’s comfort.  What do the rabbis say?  “A man’s prayer is answered only when he stakes his life on it.”  That’s terrifying enough, but when you do stake your life on it and God doesn’t answer, how much more terrifying must that be.  What is the point of it all if your comfort comes from something or someone that has no eternal value.  It’s just temporary aspirin, a symptom killer.  What you need is permanent recovery.

Prayers like this are few and far between.  Most of the time we just want temporary relief.  We don’t really pray for systemic change because if God answered that kind of prayer we’d have to alter our lives accordingly.  What we want, most of the time, is just minor corrections so that we can stay on course—the same course that got us to this place of suffering, the course that isn’t frighteningly strange.  You know, sticking with the enemy I already know.  But that’s not Asaph’s prayer.  He doesn’t want relief.  He wants recovery—and is willing to pay whatever it costs—if God will just show up.  “‘There are three ways in which a man expresses deep sorrow: the man on the lowest level cries; the man on the second level is silent; the man on the highest level knows how to turn his sorrow into a song.’  True prayer is a song.”[2]  Are you ready to sing?

Topical Index: prayer, song, suffering, refuse, comfort, Psalm 77:2-3

^[1] Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1138 מָאֵן. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 488). Chicago: Moody Press.

[2] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 208, citing Siaḥ Sarfe Kodesh, Vol. II, p. 92, paragraph 318.