Psalm 79- With backs against the wall we ask,” How much longer?”
Humiliation is not a welcome thing. Don’t try humiliating anyone or you will surely not have the last laugh. That is, of course, if you’re not God. And you’re not. You’re just another human who won’t listen to warnings, who’ll take God for granted, who tends to think, ‘I can fix this’ , who must be rudely awakened to smell the coffee!
Asaph cries out in this psalm as he pleads for mercy, “How long O Lord? Will you be angry forever? “ (verse 5). His plea starts off as a lament because his people are in an embarrassing mess. Dead bodies litter the place so that birds and wild animals have an endless feast of human steak around bloody Jerusalem where undertakers are in short supply ( verses 2-3). No decent funeral. To make things worse , the ‘dwelling place of God’ has been defiled (verse 1) which is how the lament begins. It makes sense, doesn’t it, If you want God’s attention to focus on the things of God?‘
Until you remember that you must simply plead for mercy. Mercy is what you can never deserve. You do not own it. You cannot earn it. You have no claim to it except that you can claim it from its source who delights to give it. So, I pray that this never happens to you, but, when you “have become a taunt to neighbours, mocked and derided by those around you” (verse 4)- as we would say in the Caribbean, when you want to take shame out you eye, you plead for mercy!
Note those two words- PLEAD and MERCY. They speak volumes. They say that you’ve woken up to smell the coffee whose steam tells that you’re in hot trouble, that you simply cannot fix it on your own! But you don’t have to fix it. You must admit your need of help. And that’s available in greater supply than you ever thought possible.
How long will you wait and hold God to account and not put your case before that Accountant who cancels debts and whose credit confound those who think they’d cornered you?
It’s naturally human do like the psalmist and ask God to fix up the SOBs who troubled you and pray. “Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbours the taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord!” (Verse 12)
There he goes again. “They taunted YOU, O LORD!” NOT US?
God is really gracious you know. When we want to plead for mercy and we don’t even know where and how to start, God still hears us and has mercy on us, and like these rebellious “hard ears” people, we might live another day to say, “We your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever, from generation to generation we will sing your praise”.
