How Long

Psalm 13 is only six verses long, and four times in the first two verses David asks the same thing. How long. How long will you forget me? How long will you hide your face? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and carry sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

The repetition is not a stylistic flourish. It is what waiting actually sounds like. Anyone who has waited on a diagnosis, a job, a wandering child, or a marriage that has gone cold knows that the question does not get asked once. It gets asked in the shower and in traffic and at three in the morning, in the same words, every time.

What is striking is that this psalm is in the Bible. God's people were given these words to sing in public worship. That means that asking God how long is not a failure of faith. It is an act of faith. Only a person who believes God is there, and believes he is able to act, bothers to ask him why he has not. Unbelief does not complain to God. It simply walks away.

Look at the shape of the psalm. Verses 1 and 2 are the complaint. Verses 3 and 4 are the plea, in which David asks God to look on him and answer, to give light to his eyes so he does not sleep in death. Then verses 5 and 6 turn. But I trust in your unfailing love, David says. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

Nothing in the text tells us the situation changed between verse 4 and verse 5. The enemy is not reported defeated. The face of God is not reported unhidden. What changes is that David remembers. He reaches back to the love that has never failed and the goodness that he has already received, and he lets that carry him forward into a future he cannot yet see.

That is the movement this psalm invites us to practice as a new month opens. Complain honestly. Plead specifically. Then remember deliberately. Say the words but I trust even if your feelings have not caught up. They often follow the words rather than lead them. And sing, because verse 6 does not say David will sing when the trouble ends. It says he will sing because God has been good, and that is already true.