Praying the Psalms With Hope With N.T. WrightНамуна

Challenging God

One of the ways the Psalms are beneficial is in helping us practice how to respond in difficult situations. One of the most striking examples of this is Psalm 44, which expresses the lament of the people of God, even going so far as to critique God. Fascinatingly, it's on this psalm that Paul draws when he's talking about the present suffering of the followers of Jesus in Romans 8.

Psalm 44 is relentlessly honest. It doesn't hide. It's so easy in prayer, in thinking about living as a Christian, to pretend that all is well when actually bad things are going on underneath that we're trying to ignore. We don't get anywhere by doing that. Much better, then, to face them, beating on God's door if need be to say, Hey, what's going on? This isn't how it should be. Please do something about it.

One of the fascinating things about this psalm is the number of times the word "you" appears. You did this. You have that. You said this. You helped us with the other. You seem to be ignoring us. There are over 30 instances of “you” in just 26 verses. The psalmist looks directly at God and says, Don’t think you're not involved in this. This is you—your reputation—that's on the line. We don't know why it has all gone wrong, but we know we must appeal to God.

Strikingly, the Psalm concludes without resolutions, reflecting the unresolved suffering of God’s people in many times and places. And here, as elsewhere, at least two strands run in parallel. In the one strand, God's purposes are going ahead. God is the good creator who called Israel to be his people. He will work his purposes out. He will send the King, who will do what's necessary. But at the same time, God's people are suffering, and they don't know why.

These two themes—of God's purposes going ahead and of God's people being called to apparently incomprehensible suffering—run in parallel until they meet in the cross of Jesus, where he is the suffering righteous one. It is through him, ultimately, that God's purposes are going ahead. The unresolved tensions of this psalm, and others like it, are only resolved when we stand in horror at the foot of the cross.

There are many terrible things that many Christians have had to go through, are going through, and will go through. We will all, to a lesser or greater extent, suffer. We can’t escape it. We need to know that when we're facing these puzzles and pains and things that seem to have gone horribly wrong, we can come back and pray a psalm like this. “Rouse yourself. Why do you sleep, O Lord?”

Even if we’re not personally in this kind of situation, we can think of times we were or can think of others who are currently in that state and can pray this on their behalf, trusting that the fundamental character of God is as the God who wakes up, who returns, and who does what needs to be done.

Reflect:

Consider the fact that this psalm does not adequately resolve. What does this suggest about God, about humans, or about prayer? What are some of the unresolved areas of concern in your life that this psalm can speak into?