How Long?

I've had days like this. Months even.

There's nothing more lonely to me than the times when God feels silent, distant, hidden. It's as if my anchor has been uprooted, and I feel like a rowboat floating aimlessly in an ocean of emptiness. When it happens, I tend toward somber seclusion.

So I know how David must feel when he writes Psalm 13. "How long, O LORD?" he asks. Four times he mourns the question.

This is where I usually stop (it's also where I fall into vicious sin). David, on the other hand, spends only two verses of the psalm in mourning before moving on to prayer. He spends another two verses praying before heading into the final stretch, the turning point of his perspective: rejoicing.

"But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me."

What an amazing statement amid such pain. I would imagine that David still feels the same inside. His soul still aches. Yet he presses forward in his trust in the Lord. It's amazing, but how does he do it?

John Ball, roving priest of the 14th century, makes this observation: "Faith rejoiceth in tribulation, and triumpheth before the victory. The patient is glad when he feels his physic to work, though it make him sick for the time; because he hopes it will procure health. We rejoice in afflictions, not that they are joyous for the present, but because they shall work for our good." (From Spurgeon's Treasury of David)

Wow. What great men of God. I long some day to have faith like that. I am tempted to cry, "How long, O Lord?" but for now I will focus on singing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.