How Long Is Still a Prayer: For the Week You Did Not Choose

How Long Is Still a Prayer: For the Week You Did Not Choose Preview · Opening of the manuscript The prayer list still has last month's we-already-prayed sentence. Three chairs around this table already know which household is living a week nobody in the room voted for, and which chair still treats leftover indoor consolation as the care they already gave. One of those chairs called a quieter hallway visit pastoral care and then kept the meeting on time. Nobody spoke the next word the room already needed.

A man two chairs down signed the last vote that printed waiting with hope on the packet. He also signed the first one that left a named sorrow in a smaller office. He has not asked who still holds the room.

This is a sermon about a week you did not choose. If you preach Psalm 13 as a map of anyone's private despair, you will lie. If you preach it as a poster for a hope campaign that never lets a how-long cry occupy air the quieter chairs can still 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 in the wait.

You also take away the cheap pastoral move that treats leftover indoor consolation as the care the chairs already walked.

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 grief, your quieter hallway, or the delay this table already owns. Application comes after that fact, from the God who can be cried to in the wait, who will not let leftover indoor consolation write the only care the chairs are allowed to receive.