Issue 275
Have you ever found yourself wondering about the timescale of a particular, difficult phase of your working life? You have trouble remembering when you couldn’t remember trouble; it seems an age ago when all was well and there appears to be no end in sight.
A budget squeeze has strangled all the joy and freedom out of your work or poor team relationships wear you down; going to work has lost its attraction and there seems to be little compensation for your hardship. You can stand this for a week or two, or even a month or two, but this is now no fun at all. If such a phase at work coincides with some home or personal struggles you are in the middle of a depressing cocktail. It is not really de rigueur or fashionable to have both a Christian faith and be depressed. Have you noticed that in your church or small group positive thinking is supposed to be the norm? But everybody knows and, to be fair, churches are now recognising, that faith and a sense of well-being are not automatic companions even though they are best configured hand in hand.
When your work life is depressing, your home life is tricky, and your church life is not incredibly helpful, your risk factors go up and your biggest risk is to lash out at God himself. In your heart you may know the lack of logic of this response but the heart is also guided by feelings and you feel forgotten and ignored by your own God. So, the question which you share with the poet, come shepherd, come soldier, come king who wrote Psalm 13 is “how long?”
It is this sense of having been forgotten which can be so debilitating; everyone else seems to be moving on or receiving reward, getting the breaks and in some cases having a ball – but God seems to have forgotten you.
This can spill over into your personal life. A close relationship goes sour, or you consider yourself to have been single for far too long, or your character and style just seem to be undervalued amongst your friends.
And church seems a bore or irrelevant or just targeted at someone else.
Then the circle closes and you feel forgotten by God. David even attempts an answer on the timescale thing by suggesting “forever” as an option. Of course when you’re having a hard time it does seem to drag; anyone who doubts this should compare twenty minutes on an exercise machine with twenty minutes watching TV and see which feels the longest. Pain has a habit of elongating its own duration.
But there is a second aspect of this gripe against God; it is more frustrating. It is one thing to feel forgotten or accidentally overlooked, but when you try to remind God of your predicament it is another thing to feel that he is deliberately turning away or hiding. So you pray to the walls or worship the ceiling; you dialogue with thin air and you beat your hands on a closed door. For pity’s sake how long is this going to last?
When you find yourself in one of these moments or phases it’s hard tofeel hope or expectation. This piece is not the place for shallow, quick fixes; indeed this verse of the psalm offers no solutions at all – it merely poses a question.
And therein lies its power; this opening salvo of Psalm 13 gives you clear and present permission to pose the question. Posing the question is the beginning of things; living with a question is not a hopeless state; the dialogue between the question and the questioner’s mind is vital. Don’t throw these times away. Such questions give you permission to despair and recognise your wounds. Genius is released from your wounds and wisdom is hard earned through questions. Have you noticed that?
Psalm 13 :1
1 How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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