Psalm 74 is entitled ‘A Maskil of Asaph’ meaning that it can be taken as a teaching tool, something to share insight and impart wisdom.
As the psalmist laments, he prays for God’s intervention in the context of the destruction of the Temple, asking that the Lord intervene. For indeed, the people’s humiliation was taken as an indicate of their abandonment. “O God, why do you cast us off forever?” he asks in the first verse.
But what is truly significant in this lament of suffering is that faith, even while it seems to falter, resounds in affirmation of God’s sovereignty. In verses 12-17 he rehearses the mighty acts of God- the past that prompts hope for the future even in the context of present calamity.
Can we do that? When troubles press on from every side, can we be sufficiently defiant to remember that evil will not have the last say? That we, when afflicted, and others who are illtreated, will hope in God’s future?
Yes, this is tough. The question, “How long?” (v.10) is a natural one for anyone who is hard pressed and seemingly forgotten by God, as if God is absent and letting trouble doers have their day. When there is no one to speak a word from God as even the prophetic voice is silent (v.9).
So, if this is a teaching tool, what can we learn? What do we take away when day after day, week after week, month after month, we witness human persons being crushed, through no fault of their own? When innocent lives are lost and often, despite many prayers “the downtrodden are put to shame” (v21) When war abounds and human lives are taken as collateral damage in struggles between the powerful who often remain unharmed?
The words may sound cliché, and they are certainly not my own. Frederick William Faber, who survived this life for a mere 49 years) wrote in the nineteenth century. I use his language of the day.
Workman of God! O lose not heart, but learn what God is like,
And in the darkest battlefield thou shalt know where to strike.
Thrice blest is he to whom is given the instinct that can tell
That God is on the field when he is most invisible.
(Frederick William Faber, 1814-63)
O God, teach us defiance through prayer when praying is hope alive in hopelessness.