IN THE PSALMS , David often pleads with the Lord for his favorable intervention in David’s life and needs based on his own self-assessed character. As example, he says “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth. I do not sit with deceitful men, nor do I consort with hypocrites; I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, O Lord, proclaiming aloud your praise and telling of all your wonderful deeds. I love the house where you live, O Lord, the place where your glory dwells.” (Psa. 26:1-8)
David’s words, spoken here as personal truth claims, do not ring so much as being hollow, but naïve. If they had been written later in his life in such fashion, they would be over-laden with the stench of self-denial and hypocrisy, for his battle-hardened blood-stained hands, and his immoral and deplorable conduct with Bathsheba, would give lie to his lofty affirmations. But no, these come from a much younger David, one who still has the fiery passion of youth, along with a certain savoir-faire attained by his meteoric rise to prominence; this is a David brimming with self-confidence; this is a David who does not yet know the bitter shame of failing his God. This David can pray with power, resolute in his self-knowledge of love of God and the working of his will. This David and his God have not yet suffered a disruption of relationship. This David could neither hear, nor understand, the agony of words he would write later in life: “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” (Psa. 51:11) We should probably leave the young David here, let him savor this favored relationship a little longer, and have time to build strong memories—he will need them later, and who are we to disenfranchise him of such joy in the present moment?
The Psalms speak poignantly to the pathos of the human condition, but are also radiant with an exuberance of life; they speak to these, and every range of human emotion between, across the spectrum of our brief dance with life. For youth, life is sweet with the fermented smell of the grape; for those no longer young, there is a dash of bitters in a cup of stronger drink. For those who have fallen from grace, the cup becomes “the cup of trembling.” (Isa. 51:22; Zech. 12:2) It is always this way. The biblical references are to Israel, but the image comes from Greece, and a way that was forced upon those who had been found anathema to the culture, as when Socrates was given the cup of hemlock to drink to its dregs.
The path of life from youth to old age is not necessarily a long spiral downward, but it is often accompanied by journeys deep into an emotional and spiritual abyss. We need only cast our eyes toward any street corner in metropolitan areas of the world, and there see the devastation. It is not new in our world—it has always been this way.
Such jaded knowledge comes as a direct result, so say we Christians, of a life lived in rejection of God’s grace. Anyone who has lived to old age understands not just metaphorically, but experientially, that not necessarily strongest of the five primary food flavors, bittersweet, and the range of thought and emotion that are attenuated to such a flavor. It is more prevalent with Christians to look back at the stimuli that created the bitter, and to develop a taste for it in retrospect. At the time it was only bitter, age and reflection upon the person created by dealing with such issues give pause to give thanks, and it is then that the flavor is enhanced with a delicately permeating delight of sweet. The worship of God by the elderly is, perhaps, far different than the worship of exuberant youth; but they, too, will eventually have such opportunities.
It comforts us to know that the biblical record shows David survived the destruction of his inner self at his own hands, and regained his confidence in his response to his relationship with God through trials of agony. On his deathbed, the kingdom at the precipice of destiny, he rises up and says to Bathsheba, “I promise you by the living Lord, who has rescued me from all my troubles, that today I will keep the promise I made to you in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, that your son Solomon would succeed me as king.” (1 Kings 1:29-35) God’s prophetic will for Israel is thus carried out in the greater scope of things, and David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), nearing his last breath, can refer to God, with a confident conscience refined in the fires of affliction, as “the living Lord, who has rescued me from all my troubles.” (1 Kings 1:29) Not all will give this same testimony at the end of days, for many do not survive such trials; the afore-mentioned street corners are littered with their bits and pieces of life.
But for those who do, this remains: “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.” (Psa. 71:18)
Q. Have my failures kept me from fulfilling God’s purposes?
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