Before the Answer Comes,
A meditation of Psalm 77
In Psalm 77, Asaph intimately describes a sleepless night spent seeking God’s deliverance from his anguish. With a heightened sense of desperation, Asaph is unable to find satisfactory relief or comfort from his varied ways of approaching God. He first cries out with his voice. His hands then stretch out. He groans loudly. He thinks.
Remembering God begins to make his spirit grow faint and in exhaustion he is then left silent (v.4) — frustrated with his own soul’s inability to be comforted (v.2). He cannot even find temporary relief through rest as his trouble has dominated every hour. We have been invited to listen to the cries of a man who felt rejected, forgotten, and ostracized by the One whom he knew to be his only refuge.
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Asaph attributes his insomnia to God’s action in keeping him awake. This man searches to understand (v.6), fixated on prompting some answer from the One who kept his eyelids open. First, he begins by asking a series of rhetorical questions that embolden his own soul with the truth of God’s character and challenge his own doubt head on. His intensifying questions serve to dig up the gnarly root of what perplexed him:
“So I said– This pierces me, the right hand of the Most High has changed” (77:10)
Friend, have you taken some leap of faith only to have fallen hard? Are you perplexed by the wounds or betrayal of a friend? Have you thought to discern the hand of God only to be left confused by His seeming abandonment? Caught off-guard by some unexpected, painful news? Are you left pondering the remnants of a shattered hope? Sin crouches at the door, and the evil one lies unflinching in wait, seeking to devour the limping lamb.
Asaph had good theology. He knew God’s love was unceasing, the He would not forget to have compassion, and would not close off His mercies in anger — Yet, Asaph had difficulty reconciling an apparent contradiction in what he knew to be true of God’s character with his present, difficult experience. What Asaph describes as a piercing blow, God seems to have “changed”.
At verse 11, Asaph then pivots to remember the deeds of the Lord. Instead of rehearsing in his mind this unnamed affliction, Asaph chose to rehearse God’s past deliverance with the most vivid imagery. He set at the forefront of his mind God’s dominance of the most chaotic, deep water, His strong arm of redemption. His power to illuminate the sky and shake the earth. Lastly, the image of a shepherd gently guiding his flock between the roaring waves.
By choosing to interpret his struggles in terms of God’s relationship to the entire nation of Israel, Asaph internalized the storyline of God’s redemptive and delivering work — applying this knowledge to his present experience. In effect, this led Asaph to worship God in faith for deliverance before the answer actually came.
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How tempting it is to ruminate on our woes. Psalm 77 is instructive to us in our fight against sin in response to suffering and a challenge to take control of our thoughts when emotions run high. It gives powerful imagery that stirs our souls to courage in the midst of deep water — inclining our hearts to consider the evidence of God’s intervention, protection, and guidance even though His direct footprints remain unseen. With this — Let us wait upon Him in faith. Let us worship before the answer comes.