How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Road Back After Failure

How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Road Back After Failure Preview · Opening of the manuscript The recovery packet still has last month's we-already-came-back sentence. Three chairs around this table already know which household named the wreck after a quiet Tuesday, and which chair still treats leftover indoor lament as the road they already walked. One of those chairs called a we-already-returned sentence restoration and then kept the meeting on time. Nobody occupied the how-long in air a second chair could still hear.

A man two chairs down signed the last vote that printed return on the packet. He also signed the first one that left a named how-long in a smaller office.

This is a sermon about the road back after failure. If you preach Psalm 13 as a map of anyone's private relapse, you will lie. If you preach it as a recovery pep talk that never lets a how-long occupy the same air the quieter chairs can hear, you will lie in a different direction. Preach it as lament poetry that brings despair into Yahweh's presence, and you give this church a God who can be addressed on the road back.

Text

Hear Psalm 13, from the World English Bible: "How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me? Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death; lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him;” lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to Yahweh, because he has been good to me." (Psalm 13:1-6, WEB) This is lament poetry. It is not a diagram of your unfinished wreck. Application comes after that fact, from the God who can be cried to on the road back.