Psalm 130: Learning in the Waiting
WORSHIP
LAUDS
Written by Ariana Dugan
Read Psalm 130
Devotion
In Psalm 130, the word wait, “qavah,” is used five times, and no wonder: the psalmist is writing both on the way to the temple that year and hundreds of years before Jesus. That is a real wait, and a real assurance: to sense the nature of God’s forgiveness generations before Mary was even born - to sense that even as you know the human weight of shame, in your bones you also know that God does not keep a record of your sins. He forgives.
It could be my Catholic upbringing but wow, do I have a talent for keeping a private record of my sins. I have a hard time understanding redemption even when I have evidence that I’m loved and cared for. I want to travel back in history to tell the ancient Israelites “You were right - you got it! And you believed it even before Jesus was there to prove it! I have so much to learn from how you waited and believed.”
And I am learning. I love learning. Love of learning is a gift God gave me that washes away the temptation to shame myself. I like to think of it as one of His versions of redemption crafted for shame-prone people like me - a particular hue in the morning sunrise of love (for what is redemption if not love?) that is exactly what I need to see to remember that my life is already made new.
There are plenty of things my lovably human animal still waits impatiently for - the next time I get to play with my nephews, a trip to the mountains, a stronger sense of purpose on any given day. But I don’t have to wait for evidence of my redemption.
In Psalm 130, I find myself in the company of ancient travelers who have learned the unpredictable rhythms of life and grounded themselves in a profound faith. I am humbled to walk beside them, hoping to honor their faith, and my own - our faith - by living as someone who knows God treasures me. I do not have to wait in agony for a future promise. I get to live with it already here.
Action
Think: What have you waited for in the past that God has brought to you? What, if anything, are you waiting for now? What have you learned or remembered about God in waiting?
Do: Who is God asking you to journey in waiting with? Reach out.
Pray: God, help me find rest, trust, and patience in the waiting moments of my life. Make me a container for your transformation in those moments. Give me the confidence of the ancient Israelites that you are working things for me, for us, as we simultaneously wait for and work towards the fully transformed world of your Kingdom.
VESPERS
“Put on the New Self” Written by Tania Runyan
Twenty-five years after Praying the Prayer,
when my new life was supposed to snap in place
like elastic, the smell of crisp, store-rack cotton
propelling me to run with endurance
toward a finish line I could not see,
I lie on the couch with a sour-smelling terrier
curled in the crook of my leg. Today
I will bathe him, punch through three Keurig cups,
run a trumpet book to the grammar school.
No martyrdom here, no preaching in the streets,
though tomorrow I might plant another bag of daffodils
so in April I can kneel in the gold
and thank All Things New once more.
But now I turn my eyes to things above
in the window, squirrels gibbering in the canopy
of my backyard maple. I doze and wake
to their claws skittering down the trunk,
mentally etch the face of Christ in the bark.
He doesn’t need me. He wants me.
Neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, tired
nor on fire. I will slip into newness again,
fluff the shaking, sodden dog in His name
as He drapes me with his soft and silent weaving.
