Gladness When It Doesn't Resolve

Late Monday, I stood in my garden in sadness and consternation as I looked at my tomato plants. I had only been gone four days, but as anyone who gardens in the heat and humidity of Memphis knows, you can do everything right, and things still go wrong. Good soil, proper watering, spacing, sucker to give room for circulation, and spraying regularly —and suddenly you look at the bottom leaves, and they begin to yellow and spot—blight. It can mean you lose your tomatoes and have to pull them up. But with care, ruthlessly stripping the dead leaves off, until there is not much left, spraying with fungicides and proper feeding, the plant revives, and by August you have a crop above the blight line, and by August you are rewarded with great ripening on the vine. This week, we have a Psalm written from the perspective of the blight. The Psalmist is totally honest about the conditions around him; all is bleak, the throne thrown down, the wall breached, the line of promise to human eyes cut off. The promise of God looks as dead as my tomato plants. I won’t lie to you, this Psalm is not for the faint of heart, but it is for those who hang on to God even and especially when it doesn’t look like it will ever resolve.This Sunday we will talk about it. The Psalm is jarring, and it is meant to be. It is honest about the conditions in which spiritual formation takes place, and I, for one, am glad we get to experience this together in worship. That is where all honest lament takes place, or should take plac