Life Insurance (2)
My eyes fail with longing for Your salvation, and for Your righteous word. Psalm 119:123 NASB
Longing for – Yesterday we discovered that the psalmist wants a guarantee about life. He asks God to act as his bond, to ensure he will not fall victim to his enemies. It sounds so good to hear that God cares enough to be our guarantor! But it doesn’t always seem that way, does it? Life has a way of tearing down all those religious claims of protection. Far too often it hurts to be alive. The psalmist is no stranger to difficulties and pain. He doesn’t proclaim a “Pollyanna” promise. In fact, upon reflection he expresses what most of us feel—a deep sense of longing for rescue from this place. Douglas Murray calls it an “existential tiredness.” There are days when we just want to cash in the chips and go home. Even servants can become exhausted.
Amazingly, these words, “longing for,” are not in the Hebrew text. Here is the original:
עֵינַי כָּל֣וּ לִישֽׁוּעָתֶ֑ךָ וּלְאִמְרַ֥ת צִדְקֶֽךָ
Literally, it reads, “My eyes fail for your salvation and for Your word righteous.” The translators have added “longing for,” perhaps to express what they feel as the emotional overtone, or perhaps because “longing for” is such a contemporary characteristic. But the Hebrew is simply kālû, “to bring to an end, to complete a process.” “My eyes come to an end” writes the poet. Perhaps rather than “longing for” we should take this more literally. Our vision stops. We just can’t see what life is going to throw at us next. And that’s scary. That’s why we need a guarantor, someone who can see over the horizon, who can assure us that we will have reinforcements when we need them.
A long time ago I was with a group of explorers in the Lava River Caves in Oregon. At one point the guide said, “Now we are going to turn off the flashlights. Don’t move!” and when the light went off, I couldn’t see anything. It was absolutely pitch black. Any movement at all would have been dangerous. The only thing preventing terrifying panic was the assurance that I held a flashlight that I could turn on. It was one of the strangest and scariest moments of my life (probably why I still remember it). My eyes failed.
It is for reasons like this that the psalmist asks for yĕšûʿâ (salvation). Three thousand years later we ask for the same thing, only now our request has a name, Yeshua, exactly the same word. Notice that it is Your salvation, i.e., Yeshua, the agent of the Father. And notice that “Your righteous word” isn’t an equivalence. It’s an addition. When we can’t see the end of the road, let alone the next turn in the trail, we want a guarantor that we’re on the right path. God provides that. It’s His rescue agent who shows up when needed, not to airlift us from the trail but to give us the sustenance we need to continue. A flashlight in the dark. And with a flashlight I am able to find my way back out of the cave.
Topical Index: eyes, longing for, kālû, complete, yĕšûʿâ, salvation, Psalm 119:123
