The Great Qualities of the Lord and psalm 6

1 O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
2 Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am weak;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O LORD—how long?

4 Return, O LORD, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies’ sake!
5 For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?

6 I am weary with my groaning;
All night I make my bed swim;
I drench my couch with my tears.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
It grows old because of all my enemies.

8 Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity;
For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.
9 The LORD has heard my supplication;
The LORD will receive my prayer.
10 Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled;
Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly.

This psalm talks about position of being in trouble which can have a combined physical and spiritual nature and it is not easy to separate the two.

Verse 6 says ,” 6 I am weary with my groaning;
All night I make my bed swim;
I drench my couch with my tears.”

It is interesting that the word swim is used here, and it operates as a metaphor.

The swimmer in the ocean knows that the strength of the currents become very difficult to go against or contend with.  The current takes the position of being overwhelming in nature to the ocean swimmer, who can choose to go with or try to go against the current.  What can happen is that the swimmer can be swept away in a dangerous current.

Here in this psalm David says his eyes waste away and this can be close to the idea of being swept away. The metaphor of the swimmer in the case of this psalm contains exactly that, that the troubles can not only be internally disturbing, resulting a bed of tears, but externally representing a real danger to life.

There is the sense that the Lord might be displeased that maybe David got himself in this situation in the first place, and it is possible that anybody with whom things aren’t sailing or going well, might feel that this is the signal coming from the Lord of his displeasure.

The might be the sense that the Lord is distancing himself from David and his troubles and wants a prospering and steady on his feet worshiper, a position that David is not standing in.

The position that David is in right now is like that of a boater being rocked on the high seas.

There is no tangible evidence that he can get through to safe place and his pleas to the Lord are those of a last resort. The Lord is like that last beacon of light, that lighthouse on the shore, if he can get back that is where he needs to go.

The  tide that is against David is a torrent of enemies.

What David’s troubles have done is taken away a neat and tidy place of prayer among other things.

He is now at points of desperation.

From this psalm , a few major themes can be drawn upon.

One is calling upon the great qualities of the Lord such as mercy, and crafting the prayer along the lines of the great quality, whether it be for the sake of thy mercy, for the sake of thy care, for the sake of thy goodness, for the sake of thy power, for the sake of thy beauty and so on, David is pleading the great qualities of the Lord upon his personal troubles and or wider troubles subject to intercessions.

Secondly, from verse 8 it says,  8 “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity;
For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.”

Normally, one wouldn’t think of emotions such as weeping so much as part of the voice of prayer, but this psalm clearly shows that emotions in prayer are read by the Lord as prayers and pleadings, and other emotions maybe less clearly expressed or difficult to put in words can be read as the Lord reads the heart of the one who prays.

This is why just being in the presence of the Lord, say in a quiet empty church as an example can be a place of deep communion where the Lord reads your spirit.

And then this goes back to the physical problems that David and others may face.  In verse 2 it says that he is in need of physical healing, that his bones are troubled, but David himself may not know the intrical details of what exactly is wrong, but he knows that healing is needed and he is specifically calling upon graces of the Lord, mercies of the Lord, for his healing.

This is another case where the Lord is necessarily reading beyond what the individual person understands about either his own predicament, or the predicament of others. But this lack of fuller understanding, does not preclude going to the Lord.

This psalm shows that we go to the Lord early and often, even with an incomplete comprehension of what is happening and what can be done.

The suddenness of the vexation of the enemies, represents how the Lord may bring forth qualities of power, mercy, and intervention quite suddenly.

A corollary of this for example is the gospel of Mark where the word immediate is used more than 40 times.

The turn of the Lord and what his presence might bring can be quite sudden.

A major lesson of this psalm today, is to continue to seek the Lord from more difficult places and situations and within the prayers mention that great qualities of the Lord such as mercy which is highlighted in this psalm.