A PSALM OF LAMENT FOR CORONATIDE
My great grandmother was born in the year 1900. By her 46th birthday she had lived through two world wars, one great depression, and the Spanish Flu pandemic. She died at the age of 89 due to complications after she fell off a ladder. She was trying to change a light bulb by herself.
I had heard of the Spanish Flu a few times before last year, and I often think about what my great grandmother would have made of it as a young woman back then. Statistics say the second year was much deadlier than the first one. And as we enter the second year of this pandemic I can see history repeating itself.
The second wave hit Brazil first in Manaus in February far up north and then skipped over a lot of the middle to hit south where we live in early March. Now in April it is hitting the middle of Brazil, which has the biggest population centers of our country. And things have gone from bad to worse. April might end with 100,000 COVID deaths here. Every minute right now roughly three Brazilians are dying from the pandemic. It is beyond staggering to even consider.
Our circle of friends and acquaintances here is small, but the second wave hit it too. We know of people in their 30s, 50s, and 70s who have all died from COVID-19 in recent weeks. We know of plenty more who were hospitalized and survived and even more beyond that who got sick and recovered in their homes.
The second wave is coming to India as well, which has five times as many people as Brazil. I pray daily for them and for us, and for the rest of the world. It is a lot to take in.
My calling here is to train and equip the next generation of pastors, church leaders, and church planters, and my expertise is in theology. I have been spending a lot of my days during this semester preparing for my weekly theology class, which takes so much more time for me in Portuguese than in English. Right now we are talking about who God is and how great he is.
Just this morning I was writing on how wise God is in his ways, when I received a text message that a former professor at our seminary here is now intubated in an ICU, sick with COVID-19. American news is full of shootings and deaths today too. I took a moment to pray, and then I looked back at my theology notes. Talk about whiplash!
How do you sing hallelujah with a pain in your heart?
I turn to the Psalms. Out of the 150 Psalms in our Bibles, most American Christians, at least those from non-liturgical traditions, only know off the top of their head merely a few, such as Psalm 23, 1, 100, and maybe 2 as well. None of these is a psalm of lament.
But so many Psalms come from a deep, hurt place of emotion in response to a world that seems to be crumbling all around. I could list all the Psalms of lament here, but you can look them up easily yourself. I will just share Psalm 42 and 43, which is likely one single poem:
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Vindicate me, my God,
and plead my cause
against an unfaithful nation.
Rescue me from those who are
deceitful and wicked.
You are God my stronghold.
Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?
Send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
My soul has been downcast for months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes, and I know exactly why. Our psalmist here knew why their soul was downcast too. I can visualize with them full worship services with the faithful of God, singing, praising, and partaking of the Lord's Supper together. I too sometimes feel forgotten, wondering how long this season will last.
Recently, we watched the movie Hotel Rwanda with our older kids. That world flipped upside down and crumbled in mere hours, and I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have lived through it. And yet today I think of a lesser known movie about the Rwandan genocide called Beyond the Gates. In it, the main character, a Roman Catholic priest and schoolteacher, is faced with reports of armed men coming to his church to take and perhaps kill all the people there, including him. And how does he respond? He continues with his church service as planned, because that's what he is called to do.
What I am living in is nothing like what people faced back then in Rwanda, and in reading the psalms I don't fear for my life as viscerally as so many psalmists did when they cried out to God in written prayers. But oh is my soul downcast, and I have nowhere else to turn but to God. And I have also been tasked with the calling to equip others to think about God rightly so they can live well accordingly, which is the task of the professor of theology.
And so I must depart and go back to my lecture notes, as we turn from God's wisdom to his goodness. For I too will put my hope in God, for I too will yet praise him, my Savior and my God!