WHEN THE FUTURE SEEMS BLEAK by Christina Fox for Core Christianity
This year has been a challenge for us all. In addition to the normal hardships of life in a fallen world, we also have a pandemic, lost jobs, division across the country, and severe weather. People are hurting. We are hurting. As we wait to turn a corner on all the uncertainty, the future at times seems bleak. We are weary. Sad. Sometimes even fearful.
At least, I know I am.
I’ve written much about lament this year— about as much as I did the year my book on lament came out. And for good reason: Lament is the biblical response to all the turmoil we have gone through this year.
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There’s a lament in Psalm 89 which seems fitting these days.
It doesn’t sound like a lament at first glance. In fact, its organization is flipped upside down from the typical lament. Rather than starting with the problem and ending with praise, the author, Ethan the Ezrahite, begins with a song of praise. He exalts who God is and what he has done. He recounts God’s covenant to maintain the line of David on the throne forever (vv. 3-4). He describes God in all his wonder and power (vv. 6-14). And he responds in praise (vv.15-18).
But then the psalmist turns again to the Davidic covenant, recounting God’s promise to his people to “establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens” and “I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness” (v.29 and 33). Why would the psalmist focus so much attention on this covenant?
It seems that there may have been an ungodly king on the throne and perhaps the nation was experiencing some kind of judgement from God, for God’s wrath was against the king. Their enemies were triumphing over them. To the psalmist, it felt like God had abandoned and rejected his people. The future seemed bleak. Thirty-eight verses in and finally Ethan began his lament: “But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust” (vv.38-39). To the psalmist, it seemed as though God had forgotten his covenant. The Davidic line seemed lost, “You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground” (v.44).
