How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Responsibility in the Room

How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Responsibility in the Room Preview · Opening of the manuscript The elder minutes still have last month's we-will-pray-with-them sentence. Three chairs around this table already know which household asked how long, and which chair still treats leftover indoor lament as the charge they already keep. One of those chairs called a we-already-prayed sentence oversight and then kept the meeting on time. Nobody occupied the cry in air a second chair could still hear.

A man two chairs down signed the last vote that printed prayer 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 responsibility already in the room. If you preach Psalm 13 as a map of anyone's private despair, you will lie. If you preach it as a leadership 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 in the wait.

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. Application comes after that fact, from the God who can be cried to in the wait.