For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 102. I have three items.
1.
The Psalmist talks about his personal depression, which appears to be
leading him to physical sickness. The Psalmist is lonely, and he is
mocked by his enemies. And yet, Psalm 102 goes beyond the Psalmist's
personal suffering and talks about God's restoration of Zion, which
entails God hearing the destitute and the nations fearing the LORD.
What do these two themes have to do with one another? There have been
different suggestions: that the Psalmist's personal suffering was
misunderstood as a metaphor for the suffering of the nation, and thus
the part about God restoring Zion was added; that two Psalms have been
mixed together (I think that I encountered that view, but I may be
mistaken); that the Psalmist moves from thinking about his own problems
to contemplating God's renewal of Zion; and that the Psalmist is an
exile who is describing his own problems as an exile, as well as the
problems of his exiled nation (as Lamentations 3 focuses on the
suffering individual, amidst a book that is about national suffering).
I
think that the last solution makes the most sense. And yet, I find it
interesting that the superscription says (in the KJV), "A Prayer of the
afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before
the LORD." It's like Psalm 102 was intended to be a Psalm for any
afflicted person, not just one who was suffering exile. But perhaps the
idea behind the superscription is that the Psalmist believes that
anyone who is suffering can hope that God's restoration of Zion will
take care of one's own problems----the same way that there are many
Christians today who look to the Second Coming of Christ as a time when
Christ will end or restrain evil and suffering. Or maybe the Psalmist
is trying to comfort himself with the idea that, if God will restore
Zion, then God is one who restores in general and thus will take pity on
the Psalmist amidst his personal affliction. Similarly, many
Christians today look to God's love to Israel in the Hebrew Bible to
convince themselves that God loves them personally. They believe that
God demonstrated to Israel God's character as one who is unconditionally
loving, and that Christians can assure themselves that God is
unconditionally loving to them, too.
2. Another issue that I was
thinking about when reading Psalm 102 was time. We see short time and
long time in Psalm 102. In terms of short time, the Psalmist hopes that
his deliverance will come soon. He may even believe that God is
already in the process of redeeming his nation, and yet God has not
completed that process, for vv 13-22 contain verbs with perfect and
imperfect tenses (but the KJV translates many of the perfects in the
future tense). Erhard Gerstenberger dates Psalm 102 to Israel's
post-exilic period, a time when a number of Israelites were in their
land because they had returned from exile, but they did not feel
entirely redeemed, for they still had to deal with enemies and foreign
powers.
In terms of long time, the Psalmist takes comfort in God's
eternity, perhaps because God's eternity is assurance that God's plans
will succeed. The Psalmist also wants to preserve a message for future
people, presumably about God's goodness, and, while the Psalmist fears
in v 14 that God has shortened his (the Psalmist's) days, he affirms in v
28 that the children of God's servants will continue. According to a
note in the Jewish Study Bible, the Psalmist has doubts that he will live to see Zion's restoration, but he hopes that his children will see it.
The
Psalmist may not have believed in a personal resurrection, and so I
have to admire him for thinking about the well-being of future
generations, even though he may have felt that he would probably die
prematurely and thus not see the restoration. I can't say that I am at
that place spiritually, but people back then did have more of a communal
mindset. Sometimes, though, I think that it is a good idea for me to
turn my mind away from myself and onto God's long-term cosmic plans.
3. I listened to a good sermon on loneliness, which interacted with Psalm 102. See here. It was by Michael Phillips of Grace Baptist Church in
Fremont, California. I was in a fairly good (or at least placid) mood
when I listened to that sermon, otherwise I probably would have been
defensive and angry by some of the things that the preacher was saying.
Overall, though, I thought that he had some thought-provoking
insights. He said that trying to fit in and failing is better than not
trying at all, for the latter leads to loneliness. And he also said
that we should look at ourselves to see where we may be at fault----are
we unfriendly, for example? I'd say that these are good general
guidelines. Speaking for myself, though, I don't think I'm entirely
convinced that being with people is better than being alone, for being
around people can be stressful, plus I can get my feelings hurt. And
yet, like most people, I don't want to be lonely, for I want to be
loved, valued, and affirmed, and maybe even to love, value, and affirm
others. It's a Catch-22. One wants affirmation, but one doesn't
necessarily get that around people. And yet, one doesn't get it when
one is not around people.