The storm of longing

James Cathcart October 03, 2023 2 3

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Psalm 13 (NRSVA)

1 

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?

2 

How long must I bear pain in my soul,
    and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,

4 

and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’;
    my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

5 

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6 

I will sing to the Lord,
    because he has dealt bountifully with me.

The cry to connect — to be known and acknowledged in the midst of the storms of life — runs deep in the fabric of humanity. Like the psalmist in today’s reading we all long to be heard. From our first breath we learn to be in response to how others respond to us being — in other words, what they reflect of us back to ourselves. We are wired to notice.

Which is why it’s so important that through the storms of life we take the time to listen to others and reflect them back to themselves. And, crucially, that we give one another the benefit of the doubt. We talk a lot about ‘faith’ but doubt is integral in our worldview too. Faith and doubt, like knowledge and guesswork, or hope and fear, are at the heart of what it is to be human.

Perhaps sometimes, rather than learning to have faith, we need to learn to have doubts — to doubt our uncharitable first impressions of other people. To doubt that we are so superior and too important to listen to them. After all our steadfast creator gives us the benefit of the doubt too. For when we find ourselves lost in the storm crying out, feeling alone and insignificant, God is listening, giving us the benefit of the doubt, claiming that we are in fact significant and that we do matter.

PRAYER:

Lord in Heaven,

Help us to give one another

the benefit of the doubt

as we go through the storms of life

just as you give us the benefit of the doubt,

and in that doubt may we blossom.

Amen.