Day 25: Psalm 40

If there is one question we have all asked at a personal, and at a state level, it’s “When will life return to normal?”

I think it’s a great question, and certainly worth asking, but it assumes a lot in that one word “normal.” For the Psalms, I wrote this a few weeks ago: there is Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation. To put it another way, the people of God have always assumed that pain comes into our lives not as an inconvenience, but as a teacher. In other words, a different question to ask is, “What am I learning now?” We all want this virus to go away, but God’s people have always seen new orientation on the horizon as they sit in difficult circumstances. I’ve always loved this song, you can imagine it being sung 2700 years ago:

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. Psalm 40:1-3

In verse 3, there is a question your future self would ask to your present self. Did you learn what you were supposed to? Did you learn a new song? The Psalmist learned it in the mud and mire, not in spite of it. Several years ago, I read a book by Oscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador in the late 70s during a very violent time nationally, so violent he ended up being killed on the altar of his church during mass. In his work, he offered this thought, “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”

There’s a new song you will be able to sing, a new truth you will be able to see, a new understanding of God’s sustaining grace you will have because of the tears you shed, not in spite of them. You may be made new through this process because in "normal", you saw but you didn’t see. You heard but you didn’t hear. You felt but you didn’t feel. Now you will see your children, your life, your spouse, your roof, through eyes that have cried. What we want to go away so we can return to “normal” is God’s fertile soil to write a new song.

May you and I trust that we will stand on the other side of this river, knowing the solid rock we will stand on is more solid than before. May we also know in these times we will sing new songs and see God’s world through different eyes. That’s better than normal.

Jared