Issue 280
In our torturous trip through David’s troubles, we have eavesdropped on a conversation between a man in turmoil and his thoughts; we have one side of a conversation between a man and his God, and we have a description of despair.
The story is crying out for a happy ending. When you find your points of contact with David you will sympathise with his feelings of having been forgotten, abandoned and his behaviour of thrashing about. You will identify with his irritation concerning his own image and his concern about his inability to see what on earth is going on.
Don’t think that because you are listening to an ancient poem, come prayer, from a Jewish monarch, that there is no learning for your work this week. What you are seeing is a man facing his difficulties, and that challenge doesn’t change with the passing of centuries. He has thoughts, feelings and ideas and he lives in a body made exactly as yours. His circumstances may be different, but his soul is the same. Stress is stress, pressure is pressure and trouble disturbs you whatever era you inhabit.
So if your problem is with IT, project management, team relationships, budgeting limitations, shareholder angst, market forces or client unreliability don’t switch off; if you can’t control your students or manage your workload don’t step away.
Walk back with David through his musings, and you will find him to be human like you, and he wrote his poem to share your sorrow as well as describe his.
His final act is a peculiarly human habit employed to lift the spirit. He turns to music. Nature is full of music and song, but humans use it to speak to themselves and unlock the prisons of the mind.
David decides he will sing his way out by singing praise to his God because his God has been good to him. He is presenting you with two final strategies here: Firstly, he is inviting you to share in the generic habit of singing to lift your spirit – focusing on God’s goodness; he is advocating you find opportunities by yourself or with others to sing your heart out. If you’ve been caught up in such singing you will know its power.
Harder to spot but equally important, David is advocating you make an offering based on your specialty; David is a specialist musician. He is a songwriter and knows how to use music to counteract depression; he was a music therapist to his predecessor Saul. So he is inviting you to consider using your speciality to express your praise. Maybe you too are a musician, or a writer, or a poet or an artist; perhaps your skill is in making things with your hands or designing and planting gardens; maybe your genius is in letter writing. Everyone has a way of expressing the heart – David is encouraging you to direct that expression towards your God because he is good. Your goodness connects with his and healing will flow. This is the same David who wrote “Deep calls to deep”.
Sing your song.
Psalm 13:5
6 I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.
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Geoff Shattock
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