Bono (lead singer for the rock band U2) calls the Psalms "the blues of the Bible". Pretty good description for many of the Psalms, such as Psalm 77. Psalm 77 particularly hits on some of our experience with the unprecedented challenges and frustrations that COVID-19 has caused us. And hopefully it can be a model for a shift that can help sustain us in our coping with it.
In the first six verses of Psalm 77 the writer cries out in deeply felt frustration, anguish and anxiety. "I" is used 9 times (in our English translation--this is New Revised Standard); "my" is used 6 times. What is happening hurts personally, and not only does it hurt, it seems unexplainable. Out of the anguish comes questioning of God, wondering what "the deal" is with God. And "the deal" is not just a flippant way of saying it--because verses 7-9 wonder out loud in stark terms if God has somehow changed how things work. The Psalmist has lived life with a certain sense of how life will be, a certain reliable predictability of what the "deal" is--what the covenant is, how God works and how the world works. And this has been disrupted.
We get it. Our lives--our lives lived in God's presence and care, our lives lived in devotion and faith and our Christian practice--have been disrupted. We've never been through anything like this. We've had hard things happen; we've lost those whom we love; we've been through tragedies, our own and others whom we know. But although each grief and loss and suffering and tragedy is its own real, genuine pain, it is a real genuine pain that we know about and know about how to "hang in there" through. It is horrible to lose someone we love, to lose other things which we value, but we know that these things happen in life, and although it's painful, sometimes excruciatingly so, we know how to grieve it, how to live through it. But this coronavirus, and what it demands of us in terms of negotiating its impact? We don't know what's up with this. It seems that the patterns of life, the rhythms of life and death, the ways we know to live through them--those precedents and processes don't really fit this. It's like that what God has given us to deal with it doesn't work now. It can leave us wondering if we know what "the deal" is with God anymore.
In the last part of the Psalm, however, the author muses on just how amazing and "above our pay grade" God is--and that because God is God, and does God things that we can't possibly do, or understand, maybe, just maybe, we need to trust that the God who is above and beyond our understanding has GOT THIS even if we don't understand just how. The change in perspective in the Psalmist is striking. All of that "I" and "my" focus in the first part of the Psalm disappears. The last 10 verses start with three phrases "I will call to mind" things of God, "I will remember" things of God, "I will meditate on" things of God--stating this shift in focus. From that point on there is not even one "I" or "my". Instead, it's "you" 5 times and "your" 12 times--all addressed to God and affirming and celebrating God at work in creative and powerful ways. It seems that focusing on God's strength, creativity, and power, at work in ways that can't fully be explained--and certainly can't be done--by humans, can help reorient ourselves. Even if what is happening doesn't seem to fit how we've always experienced God's presence, care, and blessings, that it is the all-powerful God who is control can help us to trust even when it challenges our sense of how it ought to be.
PSALTER Psalm 77
1 I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, that he may hear me.
2 In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
3 I think of God, and I moan;
I meditate, and my spirit faints.
Selah
4 You keep my eyelids from closing;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
5 I consider the days of old,
and remember the years of long ago.
6 I commune with my heart in the night;
I meditate and search my spirit:
7 ‘Will the Lord spurn forever,
and never again be favorable?
8 Has his steadfast love ceased forever?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’
Selah
10 And I say, ‘It is my grief
that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’
11 I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
I will remember your wonders of old.
12 I will meditate on all your work,
and muse on your mighty deeds.
13 Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is so great as our God?
14 You are the God who works wonders;
you have displayed your might among the peoples.
15 With your strong arm you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.
Selah
16 When the waters saw you, O God,
when the waters saw you, they were afraid;
the very deep trembled.
17 The clouds poured out water;
the skies thundered;
your arrows flashed on every side.
18 The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
your lightnings lit up the world;
the earth trembled and shook.
19 Your way was through the sea,
your path, through the mighty waters;
yet your footprints were unseen.
20 You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.