Psalm 77
Introduction
In just a few days we will gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, which will include all the usual trappings for the holiday, along with our own family traditions—both the explicit traditions and the implicit traditions. The explicit traditions being… football, turkey, taters, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and burnt rolls because they always get left in the oven too long. The implicit traditions include the careful tiptoeing around controversial topics like politics, religion, and money. Or hot-button topics like issues 1 and 2 we Ohioans just voted on. Or even topics like why so-and-so is still single; or congratulating someone on being pregnant… when they aren’t.
Regardless of our traditions, Thanksgiving implores us to give thanks for all our blessings. But it also implores us to put on a happy face and maintain the status quo so as to not spoil the holiday with reckless talk of the forbidden and unsettling parts of life. But is that the best way to give thanks? Or should, maybe, a real, honest Thanksgiving require a different approach?
Move 1
Psalm 77 is one of the most intensively reflective of all the psalms. It is also stunningly honest in expressing the writer’s pain, doubt, and lament featuring a striking collection of reflection verbs that reveal how the writer thinks, meditates, feels troubled, remembers, and searches his spirit. We don’t know exactly what precipitated this intensive reflection, other than in verse two when the psalmist refers to “the day of my trouble.” Nonetheless, something in his life has gone terribly wrong, and because it has, he cannot sleep, he cannot speak, his mind races with dread, he questions if God still loves him, if God has forgotten to be gracious, if God’s promises have come to an end. The writer even tells how when he thinks of God he just moans.
Have you ever felt that kind of despair? That kind of pain and doubt? I expect we all have. I know I have more times than I’d like to remember. And though seasons of despair usually have to do with difficulties and challenges happening outside of our control, I know my tendency is to engage in extracurricular anxious rumination, which is never helpful. And if that practice wasn’t bad enough, I will often work myself into such a downward spiraling dither, that I will not only reflect and bemoan all that has gone wrong, but I will imagine, and bemoan, all that is likely to go wrong in the future as well.
And while our own personal pains, doubts, and laments mirror that of the Psalmist, Psalm 77 shows us a better and more healthy way forward. The writer does not do what I, and many of us, so often do—which is stuffing our feelings deep down into our soul in an effort to suppress them. Instead, what is shown in Psalm 77 is the opposite of denial or pretending everything is fine. The writer of speaks openly of his troubles, fears, and doubts, without holding back.
This psalm reminds us that honest reflection will often take us to unsettling places, but it will not leave us there. And because it won’t leave us in an unsettling place, the example of Psalm 77 encourages us to reflect honestly about all of life—even, and maybe especially, the unsettling parts.
Move 2
The writer admits his doubts concerning God’s love and grace when he says, “Has God’s steadfast love ceased forever? Are God’s promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has God in anger shut up his compassion?”
John Calvin wrote about this unsettling lament in his commentary on the Psalms in which he observed, “The Holy Spirit has here, in the Psalms, drawn to life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, perplexities, and distracting emotions that plague our minds. The fact that all of these exist in the Psalms indicates they are a normal and acceptable part of a faithful and prayerful relationship with God.” Calvin is saying there is comfort and relief to be found in this theological truth—a truth that gives us permission, even encouragement, to ask unsettling and seemingly unfaithful questions of God. Which is incredibly helpful because in our current human condition, reflection can sometimes be painful and discouraging, and one response to this reality would be to refrain from reflection altogether. Another response would be to reflect only on what’s good in life.
But Psalm 77 suggests another response—one that does not deny or avoid what is hard in life. The Psalm gives us permission to reflect on all that is real in our lives—to name our pain, our discouragement; express the emotions that comes from it all, and then share all of it with God—no matter what it is, and no matter how it all comes out from us.
And this reminder that we are permitted and encouraged to do such is timely—but not just because we are days away from Thanksgiving. It is timely because…War continues to rage in Israel and Ukraine…because of the tragedy that befell the Tusky Valley School district this week…because a loved one who was with us last holiday season won’t be with us for this holiday season…because of all our pain, doubt, and unsettling laments that are real in our lives.
Again, this psalm reminds us… honest reflection will often take us to unsettling places, but it will not leave us there. And because it won’t leave us in an unsettling place, the example of Psalm 77 encourages us to reflect honestly about all of life, even, and maybe especially, the unsettling parts.
Move 3
When the psalm writer reflects on the misery he feels in what he calls the “day of [his] trouble” he is so filled with sorrow that he wonders if God has turned away from him. “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” the psalmist asks. “Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” With reckless abandon he unloads all his feelings and emotions—even the troubling, potentially unfaithful thoughts toward God by going deep into those unsettling thoughts and feelings, and not stopping because to stop would be to deny, pretend, and act unfaithfully.
But then the writer turns sharply from reflecting on his distress to meditating on God and God’s amazing works in the past. “I will call to mind the deeds of the LORD,” he writes. In the second half of the psalm, he remembers God’s wonders, focusing on God’s deliverance from all that God’s children struggled with.
What I find really intriguing here is that the psalm does not offer some kind of explicit resolution between the sorrow of the first half and the faithful affirmation of the second half. The writer does not resolve this tension in his mind or heart. Instead, he leaves them to co-exist, while leaning into the historical truth of God’s intervention that has always brought forth resolution to the tension. It is in the coexisting, the naming of the good and the lament, where we see a real and honest expression of thanksgiving.
Move 4
Howard Butt, Jr., author of the book “Who Can You Trust?”, developed a practice where he begins his prayers with lengthy recitals of what God had done in the past—both his past, and the historic past. He explains this practice, saying, “I make it a habit to mentally review before God my own private history by deliberately going back and plugging it into God’s Holy History: Creation, biblical Israel, Jesus and the Incarnation, his Cross and Resurrection, his Ascension and the outpoured Spirit upon the Church. This practice helps me to see all history—world history, Holy History, church history, plus my personal history together—which then tells me that God has been, and is always dependably loving and good, and you can rest your weary bones in that fact.”
What Rev. Butt does so regularly is a Christian version of what we see in Psalm 77. He mentally and prayerfully reviews and reflects on God’s actions in his life and in “God’s Holy History.” And this review and reflection leads to real honesty where he can say boldly, and faithfully—even amid the unsettling mess around him—that surely the God who had acted so wondrously in the past, will do so again. This practice of including our history into all of history leads us to a real and honest expression of thanksgiving.
Conclusion
Psalm 77 shows that reflection in difficult times isn’t something that happens quickly and painlessly. And it doesn’t happen unless we are real and honest. We don’t reflect for a few minutes and then discover everything is just fine. We don’t spout off a few trinkets of what we are thankful for and call it a holiday. Rather, reflection during suffering often takes the form of an internal dialogue, one in which we lament the incongruities of the life of faith. Like the writer of Psalm 77, a part of us questions God’s presence and goodness, while another part of us remembers God’s gracious salvation in the past.
A real and honest expression of thanksgiving will not be easy because at times we may go as far as to doubt God’s faithfulness. But Psalm 77 teaches us to reflect, not only on God’s wonders, but also to acknowledge times of pain and doubt. Which means, we will sense a tension between our current experience and what God has done in the past, and that tension may even seem irreconcilable at times. But remembering God’s gracious actions in the past will reassure us—even when our questions and doubts and struggles remain—that God is still doing what God does—blessing us with all that is good, while also helping us endure and overcome that which causes us pain, doubt, and lament.
This…what we see in Psalm 77…show us how to give, and how to have, a real and honest Thanksgiving. May it be so… on Thursday, and every day. Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, November 19, 2023
Gracious God, thank you for the Psalmist who models for us real and honest forms of reflection on the hard laments of our lives. And thank you too for the encouragement to remember your wonders, your blessings, your goodness even amid struggles.
Help us O God, to see these blessings so deeply that we don’t have to pretend as if life is all good. Help us to know that the tension between what is good and what is hard; between what is worthy of praise and what is a vile mystery; can co-exist because you are present in everything, your Spirit at work making all things holy and sacred, even when it is impossible for us to see this truth.
For that is truly the blessing we need today, and in this season. Because when we are real and honest, we admit we continue to mostly see what is hard and what is a vile mystery. We see the atrocities of war, and we lament the pain of it all. We mourn for a neighboring community and its schools, as they struggle to find a way to piece back together their broken hearts after a tragic accident.
So help us, we pray, to express honestly our weariness, while simultaneously embracing the truth that you are present, working to bring forth goodness and renewed life.
In this season of thanksgiving, help us to make time to reflect on how your grace has been active in our lives at all times—not just the times when it was easy to give thanks.
Guide us, like you did the psalmist, to reflect on how your grace has been at work throughout all of history—your biblical history from the time of creation, to the present history in each of our lives.
And most of all, help us hold tightly to your grace given to us through Jesus Christ, and the hope filled future promised and guaranteed through his life, work, message, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Guide us in all we pray for so that our giving of thanks will always be real and honest.
Please listen now to the prayers of our hearts, offered in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of the one who makes possible all we have to be thankful for, Jesus the Christ, who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”