Loose Ends (Advent Psalms #1)

During Advent, I am reflecting on the theme of waiting in four psalms.  I chose this theme because it is particularly appropriate to Advent and to my life right now.  When and how do these prayers talk about waiting?  How does that shape the way we wait during Advent and the rest of the year?  My prayer is that my words and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing to the Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
This reflection focuses on Psalm 27.

Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.Psalm 27:14

This is the very last verse in the psalm.  This is the psalmist’s conclusion: wait for the Lord.  This conclusion breaks a lot of English writing rules.  In English writing, or other formal communication, we are supposed to sum up what we’ve said so there aren’t loose ends.  But this psalm ends with waiting, which is full of loose ends. 

Those loose ends make sense when you read verses 7-13 of this psalm.  It would be hard to tie up the psalmist’s desperation into a neat bow.  The Message puts verse 7, “Listen God, I’m calling at the top of my lungs.”  This is the prayer of a desperate person.  A person who is earnestly seeking God, but doesn’t seem to be getting an answer.  The psalmist implores God, “do not hide your face from me….Do not reject me or forsake me….Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes.”  In this prayer, the enemies are real.  And God’s answer seems to be silence.  At this time in the psalmist’s life, God is hidden.

It wasn’t always so for the psalmist.  Verses 1-6 are a soaring declaration of trust and confidence.  They don’t minimize the trouble; there are plenty of wicked enemies in these verses, too.  But the psalmist also has deep trust that God will keep him safe, will hide him from his enemies.  The psalm starts with the probably familiar words: “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?”

This is one reason I love they psalms.  They do not force us to have one feeling or one prayer at a time.  These prayers are as complicated as our lives.  We can usually remember the ways God has cared for us in the past: the right job at the right time, a good friend walking with us through a hard time, a spouse when you had given up hope of ever marrying, a special knowledge of the Holy Spirit’s presence with us.  The list can go on and on.  Our great God, the maker of heaven and earth, is our light and our salvation.  We don’t need to be afraid.  

But at other times of life, this care is hard for us to see.  The right job doesn’t come, a loved one dies and you feel alone in the world, all you get from online dating is a string of bad dates, God seems far away.  Hidden, even.  Our prayers join the psalmist: “don’t hide your face from me!”  It is important to note that this psalm, like other psalms in the lament genre doesn’t say pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get over it.  It doesn’t give a theological treatise on why God isn’t actually hidden.  It gives honest voice to the psalmist’s questions and cries.     

And the psalmist doesn’t feel the need to tie up all the loose ends.  The psalmist resolves this prayer with waiting.  He has quiet confidence that he will see the goodness of the Lord again, but he ends with waiting.  Perhaps it is a middle time.  A time between the despair and new life.  Advent is a middle time, too.  Advent captures in a particular way the already-but-not-yet.  We are waiting to celebrate Christ’s first coming, but we are also waiting for Christ’s second coming.  There are still loose ends in the redemption story.  We’re in the middle time between Jesus coming to redeem the world and Jesus coming back to make everything new. 

I like to think of the last verse of Psalm 27 as a bit of a pep talk the psalmist gives himself for the middle time.  In the middle of all this, wait for the Lord.  Be strong and take heart.  You know what kind of God this is.  Wait for the Lord.  Perhaps this is a pep talk that we need to give ourselves, too.  Even if God seems hidden, wait for the Lord.  Be strong and take heart.  Seek shelter in God’s presence through whatever rituals are helpful for you—community worship, listing the ways God has been good to you in the past, Advent rituals, writing your own prayers.  Rest in the messy middle time.  Hold the loose ends in your lap—you don’t have to have it all figured out right now.  Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.