Over the next several episodes of the members podcast, I’m pairing psalms—two at a time, read back to back. Each pair moves the same direction: from dark toward light. The darker psalm tells the truth about what it’s like when things have gone wrong… when God feels far away. When faith if threadbare. The more hopeful psalm of the pair speaks from somewhere further along on the journey. The consolation they offer isn’t the result of having dodged the suffering, but having gone through it.
My hope is that somewhere in these pairings you hear something that sounds like your own life. We’ll start with Psalms 6 and 30.
Psalm 6 lives entirely inside the darkness and doesn’t try to leave it. It tells the truth of a hard situation just like it is. It says: I haunt from room to room. I’m not going to make it. Why do fears fountain so full, but grace rises slowly, wears disguises? I think that last question is one of the most raw in the whole project. And the rendition doesn’t rush to answer it.
Psalm 30 is written from the other side—not immediately after the darkness, but eventually, by someone who remembers what it was like to be inside the hard season. It says: No night tears can stop the birds and bells of dawn singing every morning. And sorrow tills the soil where supple flowers grow. It reminds us that if God has been our help, to take up whatever song we have and sing it back to him.
Psalm 6 cannot imagine morning. Psalm 30 remembers that morning always came. This distance between those two realities can be large indeed, but there can be comfort in even finding language to name what is difficult, and to remind yourself, in the words of psalm 30 that “God is a harrow, but you can’t shake him. His love lasts the night and all life long.”
