Psalms is one of the most-loved books of the Bible. Luther called it a “little Bible,” where everything is comprehended beautifully, and it is easy to see why: all the emotions, all the experiences that characterize human relationships with God and with others are described in the Psalms vivid detail—grief, joy, anger, doubt, frustration, love—it’s all in there.
The Psalms typically are grouped into different categories: lament, praise, thanksgiving, etc. But for me, I find that most of the Psalms are not so easy to categorize, and that is because so often, even when the Psalmist is in deep despair, raging at God in anguish, or challenging God to step up and act, there is still a undercurrent of defiant, persistent hope that continues to believe in God’s mercy, God’s power to bring good out of evil, and the promise of God’s goodness—even in the worse of circumstances. In some ways, then, every Psalm of lament is also a Psalm of praise, in that just by lamenting to God, it expresses the conviction that God is listening, and the relationship still holds. The Psalms are testament to the strength of God’s relationship with us, God’s abiding presence with us, through all the vicissitudes of daily life.
And in this way, the Psalms give voice in a raw, honest way to our most pointed and fraught experiences with God, and the truth that undergirds them: even in those painful moments when we are sure God has abandoned us, sure that our lives are over, sure that we will never get out of the shadowy valley, we cling to the sure hope that we will feel God’s loving arms again, that a promising future will come, and that the light will dawn.
In this Lenten season, and in this moment on the world’s stage when there is so much to fear and so much to grieve, we are comforted in the knowledge that this clear-eyed, defiant hope that says, “I believe,” is grounded in God’s faithfulness and God’s trustworthiness, the promise that God holds us and will not let us go. This hope, then, is sure.
