Song of A Wounded Soul - Psalm 102

For many of us Christmas is not only the season we celebrate our Lord’s birth, but one in which we are made more aware of the grief, sadness and pain of our lives. Though we’d like to be merry and have a merry Christmas, we struggle with the real issues of our grief.

For many believers there is an honest tension between genuine expressions of praise and thanksgiving in worship and the need to share and express authentic sorrow. Yet the Scriptures in general and biblical worship in particular encourage us to give voice to our sorrows. Psalm 102 is one of the passages where a true servant of God utters his cries of sorrow and despair. It is a passage that has much to teach us concerning how to worship God in the midst of our sorrow.
What does this passage say about worship in sorrow and how does the author deal with his feelings of lingering grief?

First, he calls on the Lord. He rightly directs his grief and pain to his sovereign, Covenant Lord.
The psalm is a meditation of his heart. He had been thinking about this for a long time. His grief and pain weighed him down to the point that he wrote it down. He is afflicted by specific suffering that he’s dealing with on a daily basis. Something that wasn’t going away soon. There doesn’t seem any way out or soon relief. He is physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally weak. There is nothing left to give. He pours out his complaint, it’s as if it was bottled up and now it gushes forth from him.

Is there grief and pain that you’re for some reason holding back?
Do you have trouble reconciling joy and delight with sorrow, pain and grief? God is not put off by our sadness and laments. He invites us to pour out our pain to Him.

Secondly, he craves God’s attention. Though there may not be relief he at least wants to know that God is aware of and cares about him and his issues.
Much like a child who hurts themselves wants their parents attention.
He begs God to pay close attention to him. He wants the Lord’s interest and for Him to address it. He brings the honesty, the intensity and the depth of his suffering before the Lord.
He opens himself up completely to God and vents the full range of his grief, pain, despair and depression.

Do you have the sense that God wants to hide from your pain?

Next he confesses his despair. In vivid language he details exactly how he feels at this point in his life.
He is depressed. In our day we would say that he is clinically depressed. He’s past having the blues or just being down a bit.
He feels lonely, forgotten and afraid. He can’t eat, has poor hygiene and cannot sleep. There are things that can happen to us that can devastate our lives. Things that can bring us to a halt.
He has expressed his grief loudly and without shame.

However, one can be in despair but not without hope. The psalmist’s understanding of God’s character and nature moves him to cast his cares and life on the Lord.

Fourthly he expresses confidence in God’s sovereignty.
In His sovereign power He can and is working all of things together for our ultimate good. He and He alone can end suffering and bring us to a place of peace, joy and eternal life.
Though God acts in a sovereign manner that does not mean He acts in a capricious manner.
He has pity on His people. God is moved by and has compassion with those who suffer. He regards the prayers of the destitute and doesn’t dismiss, treat lightly, demean or disregard their cries of pain and calls for help. In fact He exercises His sovereignty through the prayers of His people. By His sovereign will and power will bring an end to all suffering.

His confidence in God’s sovereignty finally leads him to express his full hope in God’s saving character and nature.

Lastly, the psalmist ends his cry of despair with one of hope. His hope is in God who looks out for, is mindful of and deeply cares about His creation. He sent Jesus Christ to liberate those who were condemned to die for our own sins. He expresses confident hope in the saving purposes of God that are centered in Jesus Christ.
Jesus listened to the cries of those who desired healing from pain. Jesus has set those who were doomed to die free from the penalty of our sins by His own sacrifice. Our Lord, has guaranteed that we will live with and stand before Him in an existence free from pain, sorrow, despair, anxiety and death. God’s compassionate nature will not change even though that which is seemingly fixed forever namely the heavens and the earth will change. We can therefore have hope in God’s unfailing character knowing that Jesus Christ will bring us into a place of full joy without the pain we endure and face in this life.

To Him Who Loves Us…
Pastor Lance