“I will sing about the Lord’s faithful love forever…The Lord said, ‘I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn an oath to David my servant’…But you have spurned and rejected him…How long, Lord? Will you hide forever?…Remember how short my life is…Blessed be the Lord forever.” – Psalm 89:1, 3, 38, 46-47, 52
I think I could have been friends with Ethan the Ezrahite. The superscription to Psalm 89 identifies him as the author of this song long ago, but he could just as well have been writing today.
He begins with beautiful and lofty theological praise identifying the Lord’s faithful love as not just central to his experience of God but as the force which holds the very universe together (Psalm 89:2). He recites the promise made to King David which rests upon the Lord’s faithfulness. Then he poetically retells the story of the Bible from creation to the founding of Israel to the long line of promises made to David and his lineage. Thirty-two verses provide the weighty declaration of the Lord’s faithfulness.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the tone changes. For eight verses, he lays out the evidence that he sees that the Lord has not kept his promise. This tension is not merely one that he feels cosmically or corporately. He feels the tension personally! “Remember how short my life is!” He knows the unchanging character of the Lord, but he also knows the frailty of his own life. One will never run out, while the other is showing signs of emptying. Will he see the Lord keep his promise in his lifetime? He does not know…and the Lord does not see fit to answer him.
Yet, rather than fret, he rests. The exercise of comparing the Lord’s character against the brokenness of his world reminds him that one is infinitely more weighty and stable than the other. “Blessed be the Lord forever.” Whether he sees the resolution of the tension in his lifetime or not, Ethan finds rest in knowing what…and who…continues into forever.
As another song writer would put it, “weeping may stay overnight, but there is joy in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
Think These Things 