When I Feel Persistently Sad

While the Bible offers us history, prophecy, theology, and morality, it also invites us into the poetry that speaks to our emotions. It wants you to bring your entire human experience into God’s presence. The Bible keeps us from going only with our heart or burying our feelings. The Bible doesn’t say to be led by your feelings or ignore them. It says to feel your feelings and express them. Surface them, speak to them, and shepherd them well.

Psalms are songs. We know that music stirs our emotions. Songs help us put words to what we feel. God gives us a songbook right in the middle of our Bible. They show us how people turned to God with all of their emotional experience. We’re invited to do the same. It gives us a prompt and a pattern to follow.

The gift of Hebrew poetry, which is the language in which the Psalms are written, is that it is written in parallelism. It’s thought rhyme, not rhyme in words; therefore, it rhymes in every language. 67 of the 150 Psalms teach us how to cry before God.

As we focus on Psalm 13, we get to ask what we do when we feel persistently sad. David is composing an individual lament, but after he writes it, he gives it to the choirmaster to show others how to process.

Psalm 13:1-2 makes the problem clear to us. David is talking to the LORD, himself, and his enemy. He is crying out to the LORD, the covenantal God. David knows this God; He is the God who has been from the beginning. God introduced Himself as Yahweh, the LORD. It’s a name representing God’s initiation into a covenant and the intention to rescue, do good, and bless the world through us. This isn’t a shout into the abyss or a cry to a faceless sky. He’s calling on the God of hope, but that’s also why there is hurt in it. He knows God loves him, but as he processes his complaint, he asks God if he’s been forgotten and overlooked. David is hurting and feels like God is hiding his face from him.

David wonders how long he has to seek counsel in his own soul. He feels he is having to solve his own problems, but it’s causing him sorrow. He’s distressed in four directions: toward God, himself, his enemy, and the amount of time it’s taking to resolve. Yet, even in his impatience, God invites him to talk to Him this way.

In Psalm 13:3-4, David moves from the problem to his petition. Derek Kidner said, “Lament is pointless unless it culminates in prayer.” If you don’t turn to God, then you fall into the trap of the power of victimhood because it justifies your choices. David asks God to consider him, answer him, and light up his eyes. He addresses God as his God. He then gives God some incentive…if God doesn’t do something, he’s going down, and his enemy will claim victory. David asks him to turn his face back because he knows he is in trouble and can’t save himself.

Psalm 13:5-6 is where David has a shift in his heart and moves to praise. David trusted in God’s hesed, His steadfast love. Hesed is the theme of the Bible. Steadfast love is tied to the name Yahweh; He promised He would show up for His people. He has proven that He has and He will, so we trust Him. His love holds on and never lets go.

“I have trusted” is in the perfect tense, signifying that a past completed action has implications for the future. It’s like when a marriage that’s having trouble remembers its wedding vows. Because of this hesed, his “heart will rejoice.” That is in the imperfect tense, meaning it hasn’t stopped yet. “I will sing” is also in the imperfect. He’s not going to wait to sing because “He has dealt bountifully,” which is in the perfect. God will do it, and David trusts Him. Do you see the parallelism? Perfect, imperfect, imperfect, perfect. He’s saying, “God, your ways are perfect, so I will trust in the midst of the tragedy.” Let God’s character and competency shape how you see your circumstance.

This is how all our fathers of the faith did this. They got honest, they got perspective, and then they got moving. They’ve given us an example to follow. Incredibly, we live in a time when we have more to go on than David did. He had the promise of Jesus coming, but we got to see Him! We live on the other side of the Cross. We have Jesus telling us that death was not the end for Him, so it will not be the end for us. We have victory in His name. We can see our pain and speak to the problem, while also getting perspective, and turning to praise.