How Long, Lord?

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

Psalm 13:1 (NRSVUE)

This question is a common refrain found throughout the Psalms. “How long, Lord?” There were plenty of times that Israelite writers had occasion to ask this of God. David being pursued by Saul (Psalm 59), his own son (Psalm 3), and as Israel sat in exile (Psalm 137). I think it is probably safe to say that most of us, at some point in our lives, have cried out, “How long, Lord?” Defeat, pain, heartache, violence, fear, sadness – all these things are an ever-present reality in our fallen world.

We sit in the “already, not yet” tension of Christ having already defeated death and yet still awaiting the full consummation of the Kingdom of Heaven. Paul writes that “all creation has been groaning together as it suffers the pains of labor…” in Romans 8:22. You and I are not alone in this feeling. Asking “how long” reveals to us two truths.

First, God can handle your questions. He can handle your sorrow. He can handle your anger. Not only do we see examples of this time and again in the Old Testament, such as Elijah crying out to God for death in 1 Kings 19:4-9 only to be comforted, fed, and rested, but we are also informed about this practice in the letters of the New Testament, such as Paul’s instruction to the Romans that we are able to cry out directly to God (Romans 8:12-17). God wants you to cry out to Him with honesty and conviction. He wants you to lay it all before Him, because “apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John 15:4. God has always deeply desired to indwell with His people from the Garden to the Tabernacle to the Temple, so much so that Jesus emptied Himself, becoming man so that man might be saved. This is not a God who doesn’t want to hear from you or who could possibly fall away. This is a God who can handle it.

Second, it will not be forever. In Revelation 21:4 we are told, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” When we are crying out to the Lord “how long” we cry out in anticipation of all things being restored. We do not cry out with hopelessness but expectation, and it is that very expectation that emboldens us to cry to God during fears, trials, and sorrows. We cry out because we know His promises to be true, and while we wallow in the “already” we never forget the “not yet.”

Whatever you may be going through, or perhaps whatever someone close to you is going through, know that you are not alone. There is a great cloud of witnesses, both those departed and those active in the Church today, crying out with you. We cry “how long, Lord” to the God who loves, listens, and is closer than we sometimes realize.

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