The following meditation is from Doug Hood’s upcoming book: A Month of Prayer & Gratitude: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.
“How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Psalm 13:1 (Common English Bible)
The critic Guy Davenport wrote that translation is a game of two languages, and that “the translator is in constant danger of inventing a third that lies between.”[1] The language of the Christian faith is often characterized as one where God is responsive to prayer. The language of lived experience suggests that, on occasion, God is inattentive to prayer. What is the translator to do—how does a person of faith translate a “responsive God” to the occasional experience of an “inattentive God?” Often, the translation—or explanation—is that the prayer lacked sufficient faith or that the prayer failed to follow some prescribed rubric or pattern. The tragic result is a third language, a God that is responsive only if the prayer has been constructed properly or is undergirded by an unwavering and sturdy faith. The third language is unrecognizable to the people of the Bible, particularly the psalmist. It is a language that suggests that effective prayer is dependent upon us, not God.
Psalm 13 is the shortest of the prayers that seek help from God in the Book of Psalms. At the beginning of this prayer is a rhetorical question, “How long?” The question is asked four times in the first two verses. Information isn’t sought. A response is sought from a God that seems unresponsive. The individual who makes this prayer is in distress. An urgent neediness is presented to God, and the expectation is that God will show up and answer, consistent with the understood character of God. Excuses for God’s inattentiveness are not offered; God is not let off the hook. This is a powerful witness of refusal to inventing a third language. God is known as a responsive God. So, where are you God? As James L. Mays makes clear, “God does not help; there is no evidence of God’s attention and care. Anxiety tortures the mind with painful questions.”[2] The named experience resonates with our own when we are impatient and desperate. Our questions about God’s apparent inattention are not unfaithful.
It is important that the reader—the one who is eavesdropping on this urgent prayer—understand that the psalmist is not releasing their frustrations upon another. It isn’t unusual for the faithful to speak to another of their disappointment with God. Many times, that is the preferred approach—sharing with a friend, rather than directly to God, a disappointment or hurt with a God that seems inattentive. This seems safer, less dangerous, than a direct and frank conversation with God on such matters. What is suspended in such moments is the recognition that nothing can be kept from God. God is privileged to our conversations as well as our thoughts. Just as Adam and Eve sought to hide from God, we participate in the self-deception that we can vent our frustrations about God to another without God’s knowledge. Why risk stirring God’s anger with such a blunt approach? Here, the psalmist does. God has let them down, or so the psalmist believes. Why not an honest conversation with God?
This bold move, this courageous exercise of faith, in turning directly to a God who seems inattentive, grants permission to the reader to do the same. The psalmist’s unflinching honesty before God demonstrates a confidence in God’s love and care for the well-being of the faithful. This nervy move reminds the reader of another man of God named Job. Job never flinched before God in demanding an answer for his suffering. The answer never came to Job. Yet, in time, God does demonstrate faithfulness to Job with the return of good things. What we find in Job’s story is that the individuals who feared holding God accountable received God’s rebuke. The psalmist in this prayer doesn’t receive an answer either. What to do with God’s apparent inattentiveness? The psalmist chooses gratitude. “Yes, I will sing to the Lord because he has been good to me” (Psalm 13:6). Choosing to give up on God was not an option for this one who asks God, “How long?” Such a choice only results in a life of despair.
[1] Wood, Graeme. “The Iliad We’ve Lost,” The Atlantic, November 2023, 83.
[2] Mays, James L. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Psalms. Louisville: John Knox, 1994, 78.
Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood 