"How long, O Lord?"

The Psalms of our Hebrew Scriptures always have constituted the Prayer Book of the
people of God. In the Christian tradition, psalms have been read and prayed during
services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer for centuries. Monks and nuns read and
pray the psalms several times each day, working through all 150 Psalms every two weeks.
Billy Graham once suggested that everyone read through the Psalms every month,
reading five each day.

As I have read and prayed the psalms for years, sometimes I find that it almost seems to
be a non-thinking routine. Other times, each psalm seems to be alive and filled with power
and wonder and meaning. Other times, a psalm seems to be just utterly detestable... take,
for example, the last verse of Psalm 137!

Author, pastor, and theologian, Eugene Peterson, reminds us that the psalms are there to
help us pray in ways we otherwise might not, to give voice to negative emotions we might
be tempted to deny, to give us words to pray when we have no words of our own.
Ever since the events in Orlando of last Sunday morning, when so many innocent people
were systematically gunned down, I have tried to find words to pray. When the horror of
such a blatant attack on members and allies of the LGBTQ community - especially during
Pride Month - began to force its way past my initial disbelief that something like this could
happen, I have tried to find words to pray. As I have reached out to friends far and wide
who are a part of the LGBTQ community, and as I have heard their pain, their grief, their
fear, I have tried to find words to pray.

At times, my prayers seemed to just tumble out of my mouth and heart in a torrent of
compassion and love and pain and heartache and anger. At times, I simply sat in silence,
trying to hold those in pain within the embrace of God's love and light. At times, words
completely failed me.

Consistently, though, these words from Psalm 13, have echoed within me:

"How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?"

Usually, these words have been abbreviated to this two-word, piercing question and
prayer: "How long?"

I want God to DO something! I want God to take away pain and fear from those who are
suffering! I want God to beat some sense into our lawmakers! I want God to stop people
from perpetrating this mind-boggling violence! I just want God to STOP IT ALL!

"How long, O Lord," I cry! How long until justice is realized? How long until love reigns
supreme? How long until "the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord, who
shall reign forever and ever?" "How long, O Lord?"

And then I realize that God has not abandoned us. God has not left us solely to our own
devices. God has not ceased to love and care and stand with us. God carries our pain,
and shares in it. God holds our tears, and sheds divine tears right with us. God wraps us
in grace and compassion, even when/if we're not aware of that.

And then I realize something else. "How long" is not just a question that I am asking of God.
"How long" also is a question that I must ask of myself...that we all must ask of ourselves.
"How long" will WE put up with conditions that lead to this kind of horror and tragedy?

I don't know the answers to much of this. But I do know that I have to continue to ask this
question to the Lord: "How long?" And I know that we have to ask ourselves that very same
question.

Praying for you to experience anew love, grace, comfort... and even hope.

There are times

There are times, aren't there, when our words fail us?  When trying to explain to someone about the wonder of a God who loves us so much and who surrounds us with astounding grace...well, how do you speak about the Infinite among and within us when all we have are finite words?  When trying to explain the miracle of childbirth, of watching a brand new human being come into the world, and you are filled with all the hope and the fear of what life will hold for that tiny, fragile individual...how can you put that into words?

And so what words possibly can be sufficient to express all that we are feeling in the light of the murders of the nine individuals last night at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston?  How can we understand such evil and depravity in anyone?  How could that young man have sat through an hour-long study of the Holy Bible, and only then take out his gun and start shooting?  How could the holiness of a sanctuary - a place where God is worshiped - be so horribly and brutally violated?

In pain, anger, dismay, and frustration, we cry out with the psalmists of old: "How long, O Lord? How long?"

The Presbyterian Church's Book of Common Worship contains this prayer, attributed to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

'Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right side or your left side,

not for any selfish reason.

I want to be on your right or your best side,

not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition,

but I just want to be there

in love and in justice and in truth

and in commitment to others,

so we can make of this old world a new world.  Amen."

Most of us, at least every Sunday, join in praying that God's reign would come and that God's will would be done on earth as in heaven.  We long for that day. We pray for that day.  We wait for that day.

In our waiting, let us also work...and pray...and speak out...and love our neighbors...and love even our enemies...and show compassion...and weep with those who weep...and rail against injustice wherever it exists...and join our hands and voices and efforts with those who work for peace and for justice.

Yet there still are no words, at least not right now, at least not within me.  And so I simply grieve.  And I pray.