I was like a beast

Psalm 73:21-26

When my soul was embittered,

  when I was pricked in heart,

I was brutish and ignorant;

  I was like a beast toward you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
  you hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,
  and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
  but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Romans 8:26-27

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Having chosen today to begin this series of thoughts, I was pleased to find Psalm 73 in the lectionary.  This has never been a particular favorite of mine, but I am now struck with the knowledge that it ought to have been.  In the entire text of the psalm, we hear Asaph’s account of his own struggles with injustice: the corrupt prosper when they ought to be condemned.  But he finishes the psalm by turning his eyes away from those around him and back toward the Lord.  The corrupt may prosper in life, but what is that to him?  He does not desire what they have, for he has the Lord.

What particularly stood out to me and drew my attention to the rest of the psalm was the portion that begins the quoted text.  “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,/I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.”  As he looked around at the corrupt prospering while he probably did not, he became bitter.  In his bitterness, he became a beast to God.  This is something to which I can relate only too well.  When I have been in the midst of sorrow, I have lost all of my higher faculties.  True, I believed that I reasoned well and was sensitive to my surroundings.  But in retrospect I am able to see the howling and the snarling, the bestial cries of anguish against a God who will not satisfy my appetites.  Bitterness became so overwhelming that I lost the ability to draw near to God.  I stood at bay in the corner of his house, teeth bared at any approach.

Nevertheless.  I find this to be a beautiful way to continue.  It isn’t the statement “Then I returned to my senses” or “When sorrows ended”.  I was brutish and ignorant, I was a beast.  Nevertheless.  Even as an animal, I am continually with you.  You love me and you guide me, and you will receive me to glory.  Brute though I am.

In the most difficult times of life, it can be difficult to stay with the Lord.  We may feel that he has abandoned us.  We may feel that he hates us and is seeking our destruction.  Often we may come to resent God and to resent the church because we are in pain and he and they are doing nothing to alleviate it.  Or we may simply believe that he doesn’t care what happens, or that he doesn’t exist.  In our bitterness we may draw lots of conclusions.  May this psalm be an encouragement to us.  In the midst of our trials, when it is hardest and we are the most ignorant and brutish, may we continue with the Lord.

In his way, St. Paul illuminates this idea for us.   Since I learned to read Paul rightly, not as a dry theologian but as a man who deeply loved the Lord and often grew over-excited about him, I have also learned to love his descriptions of God’s work.  As he expands on ideas that have become almost mundane for many of us who have grown up reading his letters, you can see him getting carried away.  It is believable that his handwriting got larger as he went on.  And so it is in Romans.

St. Paul speaks directly to this idea (though not, of course, solely to this idea) that Asaph wrote of in the psalm.  He is writing about suffering, and about the glory prepared for us.  And he explains to us the very reason that I now encourage all of us to remain with the Lord throughout our trials.  We are mere beasts when our hearts grow bitter, but even in this state the Holy Spirit groans for us.  When we do not know what to pray, when we cannot approach the throne of grace with confidence, the Spirit cries out on our behalf.  He prays for us more fruitfully than we can pray for ourselves, because he knows the will of the Father.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of the picture is that all of this is the work of God.  He takes us into his care, he lovingly tends us because he desires to.  He is under no obligation, he doesn’t do it against his will.  He watches over us, he gives us his Spirit, he guides us, and he will receive us into glory, into the inheritance that we share with his Son.

Truly, whom have I in heaven but you?  And what on earth can I desire but the Lord?  What could ever compare?  Still, our desires will rage and we will long for things that do not satisfy.  We will howl.  And throughout, nevertheless, he will groan for us.

Thanks be to God.