How Long, O LORD, Will You Look On?

Scripture — Psalm 35:17-18 (NRSV)

How long, O LORD, will you look on?
Rescue me from their ravages,
my life from the lions!
Then I will thank you in the great congregation;
in the mighty throng I will praise you.

Devotion

How long, O Lord?

This may be one of the most common questions offered to God in prayer. Almost all of us know too well the experience of crying out for God’s help but hearing or receiving nothing. We pray for God to heal us or our loved ones, but healing never comes. We ask the Lord to restore our broken families, but estrangement remains. We cry out to God for help in a desperately difficult workplace situation, but God seems to be on vacation. We seek God’s justice for the poor and oppressed, but hunger and violence continue to haunt the lives of millions. We believe that God sees all of this and has the power to make things better, but he appears to be silent and inactive. Thus, we join with David by crying out, “How long, O LORD, will you look on?” (35:17).

Faith requires us to live in the tension of what we call unanswered prayer. Some have found ways to escape this tension. For example, some theologians claim that God does not have the power to intervene in human affairs. God looks on and does nothing because God’s hands are tied. Others envision God as a kind of mindless force that really doesn’t look at all. Such an impersonal power cannot be expected to do what we request in prayer. Still others reject the notion that God is compassionate. Their unfeeling God may look down on our pain, but has no reason to act.

Explanations like these let God off the hook when our prayers are not answered, but they also deny fundamental biblical truths about the nature of God. Scripture reveals God as an all-powerful, personal deity who cares deeply about us. This God does sometimes act in amazing ways to alleviate pain or deliver people from distress. This God promises to hear our prayers and to love us unceasingly. So, when God looks on and does nothing, this inaction can seem incompatible with God’s own nature. It’s the very character of God that puts God on the hook here.

I believe there is much to be learned when God seems not to answer our prayers, though, personally, I don’t like to learn these lessons. We can learn that God’s timing is not our timing. We can come to understand that God’s ways are not our ways. We can begin to see that God is at work, though not in the ways we had hoped. These are just some of what we can learn when we cry out, “How long, O Lord?”

What I find most encouraging in Psalm 35 is the boldness of the psalm writer. He doesn’t pretend everything is just fine in his relationship with God. He doesn’t create a false religious self, acting as if he is not desperate and despairing. Rather, he cries out from the depths of his soul, demanding God’s help and challenging God’s apparent lack of response. The example of Psalm 35, as well as many other psalms, encourages me to be fully honest with God, to cry out in my need, and to ask, when it is necessary, “How long, O Lord, will you look on and do nothing?”

I also find encouraging the psalmist’s implicit trust in God. After crying out “How long?” he adds, “Rescue me from their ravages, my life from the lions! Then I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you” (35:18). The writer assumes that “then” will come the time of deliverance which leads to celebration. Often “then” happens on this earth and in this life, as God delivers us from our own “ravages.” But sometimes deliverance will arrive later, in the age to come when God makes all things right and we see God face to face. The truth is we don’t know the answer to “How long?” But we do know the God who knows the answer and who promises always to be with us and always to love us (Rom 8:38-39).

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Wake Up, Lord!.