How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Practice That Makes It Visible

How Long Is Still a Prayer: The Practice That Makes It Visible Preview · Opening of the manuscript The formation binder still has last month's unused lament page. Somebody printed how long in a font that looks like courage. Tuesday arrives with no crisis attached to it, which is how a church learns to treat a closed prayer as ordinary homework. Psalm 13 will not help you keep that arrangement.

A man two chairs down signed the last vote that printed wait with God on the packet. He also signed the first one that left the how-long in a private journal nobody at this table has to occupy. He has not asked who still holds the practice.

This is a sermon about the practice that makes lament visible. 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 formation campaign that never lets a how-long occupy air a second chair 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 formation move that treats a closed journal as the practice 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 a closed journal write the only formation the chairs are allowed to keep.