This psalm is not a formula for dealing with the tension. It’s a friend in the fight.
I love a good Hallmark movie (can I even call them good?). I love the innocence, the formulaic outcomes, and the perfect towns where everything all works out in the end for the main characters. Really, though, I just love happy endings. In fact, I am less inclined to watch something if I think it won’t resolve neatly at the end.
That’s fine with movies. The problem is that my desire for tension-free entertainment spills over into real life—and there, happy endings can be hard to come by.
Life is full of unresolved tension, with no guaranteed happy ending in sight. And that’s hard to live with. For ourselves, it can lead to despair. We wonder when relief will come, when our prayers will be answered, when our life will fall into place. When we see it in the lives of others, we are tempted to gloss over it, or pretend like it is better than it actually is.
Unresolved tension makes us squirm.
This is one of the reasons I find the psalms so helpful. The psalms are content to live in the unresolved tension, sometimes for a long time. The psalms sometimes end with no resolution (like Psalm 77 and 88), sometimes with no answered prayers (like Psalm 42, 43, and 89). We tend to think that the psalms are praise (since that is what the word means), but really, this biblical songbook is filled with laments. Yes, we are intended to praise the Lord forever (Psalm 34:3). But for this life even in our praising we need to learn to do it when many longings are as yet left unmet.
Living with the Tension
Why are the psalms like this? Because they are concerned less about a solution and more about what you do when there is no solution. The psalmists spend most of their time convincing themselves to trust, and less time figuring out how to tie everything into a neat bow of happy resolution. The psalms are filled with raw emotion, not formulaic answers. Just consider the words of Psalm 89:
How long, LORD? Will you hide yourself forever?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?
Remember how fleeting is my life.
For what futility you have created all humanity! (v 46-47)
LORD, where is your former great love,
which in your faithfulness you swore to David? (v 49)
Prior to these verses, the psalmist has spent a number of verses recounting all that God has done and promised to him. Yet that leads him to ask these pain-filled questions for resolution: Where are you, God? You’ve promised me one thing, yet I’m experiencing another—how long will I live with these questions? Have you ever felt like that? You know the promises of God to you in Christ, yet your life doesn’t match up. You remember all the ways God has been gracious to you, yet you are still left with the cry of “how long?”
Where Do You Go With Your Questions?
Some people pit psalms like Psalm 42-43 against Psalm 13 as an example of what not to do and what to do. Psalm 13 ends with trust, Psalm 42-43 less so. But these different responses in the psalms are showing us what life is like, without providing commentary.
This is helpful to us when we are surrounded by unanswered questions. These questions are not wrong. Our feelings do not need to be ignored or necessarily repented of. This world is utterly confusing sometimes. We can take those questions to God, asking him “how long?” right along with our brother, David.
If you are weary or anxious of heart; if you can’t get beyond the questions to even find words to make your requests known to God, then David gets you. And even more encouragingly, God gets you. These unresolved places are here in Scripture for your growth and for your help.
In the psalms, we have a model of where to go with the tensions of living as God’s people in a world not yet renewed by our God.
A Resolution is Coming
Psalm 89 does end with praise:
Praise be to the LORD forever!
Amen and Amen. (v 52)
That might seem like a tidy resolution—or at least one of trust—except it’s not. The scholar Mark Futato says that “sometimes these [psalms] were written in November and finished in August.” This psalm is not a formula for dealing with the tension. It’s a friend in the fight. When all has been left at the feet of our God, you are left with only one thing—God reigns. This is how we keep our bearings in unresolved tensions.
The problem is that we often seek to impose a resolution before the appointed time. We do know it will be made right one day. We just aren’t the ones who know when. In the meantime, the psalms give us permission to lament and pray and ask questions in the messy middle before the day comes when our Savior arrives with the ultimate happy ending. And the psalms also give us words to bring our feelings to God, and know how to use them to build our faith.
My longing for happy endings is a Christian one. We were literally made for happy endings. Until that day, though, we can let the psalms minister to us in the tensions as well as the joys of our lives, giving us the language to talk to our King and the assurance that He is with us and for us, today and forever.
Bio: https://www.thegoodbook.com/authors/courtney-reissig
Courtney Reissig is a writer and Bible teacher. She is Managing Director at Risen Motherhood and is the author of “Teach Me To Feel” and “Glory in the Ordinary.” She's married to Daniel and they have four sons. Together they serve at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, AR.
This article was originally published on the Good Book Company blog and is used with permission.
