Psalm 142

Have you ever been in a dark, lonely place?  David wrote this psalm while hiding in a cave from King Saul, a representation of where his soul was.  Maybe you have been in the woods at night by yourself.  Maybe your car broke down on a not-so-busy road. Maybe you have found yourself alone in the house, not so much enjoying the quiet but sensing the loneliness.  This is where David finds himself at this moment.  Now, he had a cadre of mighty men with him, so he wasn’t physically alone.  The men were with him in spirit, but his soul was depressed and lonely. Even though he had friends with him, he says, “no one cares for my soul.”

I have felt this way before, and it isn’t particularly enjoyable!  The encouragement, however, is that there is One who cares, and it is to Him we must cry out to.  David turns to God in verse 5, exemplifying how we should respond.  Being in a place like this isn’t comfortable; in fact, it is downright miserable.  We want to be liberated of the pain, depression, isolation, and sadness.  Yet, God doesn’t just run over and pick us up because we are crying.  Instead, He comes and sits with us and laments along with us.  He feels our pain.  He experienced it in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He was in extreme anguish and even His closest friends couldn’t stay awake to suffer with Him.  They didn’t get it, until it was too late.

One of the complicated principles of the Kingdom of God is for us to learn to cry out to God in our anguish.  “The pit” isn’t designed to torture us, it is designed to teach us.  In American society today, we are taught to avoid the pit at all costs.  To numb the pain, to distract our souls, and to do whatever is necessary to avoid discomfort as much as possible.  This actually does us a disservice!  This creates other gods in our lives that we think can rescue us, but they actually create a false hope.  

After years of training and deployments to war zones in the military, I was well-conditioned in disassociating from my emotions.  Upon entering civilian life, I found this tactic to actually be self-destructive. In the military, it is necessary. When someone close to you dies, when the enemy surrounds you, when literally all hell breaks loose…you cannot waste time contemplating and processing your emotions.  That will get you killed.  But in civilian life, that is rarely the case.  Additionally, in a war zone, there is little around to help you numb the pain.  Instead, we are taught to embrace and channel those emotions for use against the enemy.  However, when you come back home, there is no current enemy threatening your life.  So, what are you supposed to do with that?

In David’s case, he was in battle.  There was a real enemy trying to take his life.  Yet, he decided to cry out to the Lord for help.  He clings to God’s promises, asks for help, and trusts Him to deliver.  He recognizes his situation and laments the position he is in.  This is healthy emotional processing!  We know that David even had the opportunity to overwhelm and kill his persecutor.  His friends snuck in to enemy territory to get him some fresh water, but he refused to drink it.  Instead, he chose to fully embrace his predicament and trust in God over his own friends!

We can learn a thing or two from David.  In today’s society, there is this version of masculinity that would consider David a sissy.  A weakling who couldn’t fight back in the face of adversity and just hid in a cave and cried.  This isn’t biblical masculinity.  He was recognizing, embracing, and processing his emotions with the only One who could do something about it.  He put his life in God’s hands and trusted Him with it.  Later, we see David as a great warrior king who rebuilt the country.  He was a warrior king way before that.  He was a warrior king in this cave, crying out to God.  He faced and recognized his fears and turned them over to the Lord.  He didn’t care if anyone heard him crying.  He didn’t shy away from his dark night of the soul.  He embraced it.  While he didn’t enjoy it, he also refused to numb himself to it.  

How can you better embrace the pit for God’s glory?