A Psalm for Aging Gracefully
I'm not a person who really loves the psalms unless I'm in exactly the right mood. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. Maybe if I heard them as actual songs, to music, it would help. But sometimes they still penetrate, like the other day.
I had gotten a somewhat bizarre email from a well-intentioned friend that said, in part, "You know, I can always pray for my other friends, but with you, it's hard for me to pray because I can't envision how things are going to work out in your life. So it's hard for me to trust God to take care of you. I guess I just love you too much." Now, this person's heart was in the right place, sort of, but it was unsettling to have a friend wonder whether my life was going to turn out, or whether God was taking care of me. I spend enough time battling such doubts on my own, you know?
Feeling a little lost, I happened across Psalm 40, which begins with David singing, "I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry." Now, my waiting for God could rarely be described as patient--rather fretful, mournful, and willful. But still, something in the line spoke to me: it was that what comforted David was reciting his own history back to God.
And this was the particular remedy I needed. Looking back on my life, I realized that in spite of all my complaining and resisting, God has dragged me kicking and screaming toward faithfulness. My progress is probably imperceptible, but in a sense, that reminds me all the more of God's forbearance with my glacial slowness. Even as I'm more aware of the holes in my faith, I can see that there's so much that I've learned, so much that I don't worry about anymore that I used to fear so intensely, that it's a relief to realize, hey, maybe there's a difference after all . . . it's not that I felt like, "Okay, I've arrived," but I felt like God was saying, "Look, yes, you're still a mess in some ways, but then look at how much worse you were before and see what I've done."
Thinking about this makes me look forward to growing old, to living long enough to have a really substantial faith instead of a sort of provisional one, which is what I think I have right now. When my grandmother died, 87 years of experiences with God had enlarged her faith so that nothing unsettled her--not $3000 electric bills (a long story), not prodigal family members, not even the death of her husband of 50+ years. Certainly not one silly email from a friend. I don't know if everybody continues to grow in faith like that, through all their lives, and I suspect that maybe they don't. I've seen some hardened, bitter older people, and I've seen some luminous ones. I pray that I'll get to be one of the second kind, even as I know that I'm often fighting God with all my might in all that He has to do to try to make me that way.
I had gotten a somewhat bizarre email from a well-intentioned friend that said, in part, "You know, I can always pray for my other friends, but with you, it's hard for me to pray because I can't envision how things are going to work out in your life. So it's hard for me to trust God to take care of you. I guess I just love you too much." Now, this person's heart was in the right place, sort of, but it was unsettling to have a friend wonder whether my life was going to turn out, or whether God was taking care of me. I spend enough time battling such doubts on my own, you know?
Feeling a little lost, I happened across Psalm 40, which begins with David singing, "I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry." Now, my waiting for God could rarely be described as patient--rather fretful, mournful, and willful. But still, something in the line spoke to me: it was that what comforted David was reciting his own history back to God.
And this was the particular remedy I needed. Looking back on my life, I realized that in spite of all my complaining and resisting, God has dragged me kicking and screaming toward faithfulness. My progress is probably imperceptible, but in a sense, that reminds me all the more of God's forbearance with my glacial slowness. Even as I'm more aware of the holes in my faith, I can see that there's so much that I've learned, so much that I don't worry about anymore that I used to fear so intensely, that it's a relief to realize, hey, maybe there's a difference after all . . . it's not that I felt like, "Okay, I've arrived," but I felt like God was saying, "Look, yes, you're still a mess in some ways, but then look at how much worse you were before and see what I've done."
Thinking about this makes me look forward to growing old, to living long enough to have a really substantial faith instead of a sort of provisional one, which is what I think I have right now. When my grandmother died, 87 years of experiences with God had enlarged her faith so that nothing unsettled her--not $3000 electric bills (a long story), not prodigal family members, not even the death of her husband of 50+ years. Certainly not one silly email from a friend. I don't know if everybody continues to grow in faith like that, through all their lives, and I suspect that maybe they don't. I've seen some hardened, bitter older people, and I've seen some luminous ones. I pray that I'll get to be one of the second kind, even as I know that I'm often fighting God with all my might in all that He has to do to try to make me that way.
posted by Tara | 10:11 PM
2 Comments:
Just thought I would let you know that U2 put Psalm 40 to music in the mid-80s on their War album. It's really beautiful.
A lot of it's in the trying itself, it seems.
Thanks for your transparency, Tara.
I guess I don't know you very well, because I just don't see you this way at all. As a hopeless case, I mean. Or anywhere near it.
And, of course, you're not one. Hello ...
I'll stop now before I drive my foot any farther down my throat.
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