Words from psalm 31:
‘be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from
grief; my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years
with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away’.
Do we hear these
words differently on Holy Saturday than on Monday evening?
Then perhaps the
words condemning the wicked to go ‘dumbfounded to Sheol’ revealed our human
desire for justice or revenge; yet perhaps there a difference when we hear cries of
scorn, horror and brokenness when we know that the one who is our stronghold
has broken the stronghold of hell. He has plumbing the depths.
We face the silence
of the grave: ‘Into your hand I commit my spirit; for you have redeemed me, O
LORD, faithful God’.
Yet the work of our
redeemer is being done: ‘incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily’ says the
psalmist.
Continuing: ‘Blessed
be the LORD, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me…’
The psalm
speaks of being alarmed as when a city is besieged. Here, being driven from
sight takes us beyond the grave; such is the depth of the love of God in Christ
Jesus.
As Paul writes: ‘For
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.’
He is indeed our
refuge. The words of psalm 142 heard on this holy, silent day of grief: ‘you
are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living’.
In death there is
hope. This is more than the psalmist could have imagined. Companionship not
just in loneliness or when our spirit faints; but God bringing light into the
very depths of darkness, where there is not breath.
© Julie Gittoes 2016
