I’m actually enjoying getting older. Sure, there are some new creases on my face and I’m not the athlete I was before. Sure, I get tired earlier and forget things easier. But I’m less anxious, less worried about appearance, more integrated, and happier.
With age comes perspective. When troubling things come my way, I’ve often seen similar things before and I know they’re survivable. I don’t think I’ve become jaded. I’m just not as easily disturbed.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. There certainly are. In fact, there are more than when I was younger. How’s that? The more people you love, the more problems you have. Bigger hearts means bigger hurts.
Psalm 71 approaches personal difficulty from the angle of age. Even so, it starts out similarly to many other psalms, lamenting difficult people and asking God for help.
Just because I’m older doesn’t mean people are any less difficult or that I need God’s help any less. In many ways, my prayers don’t change at all with age, because most of my basic needs remain the same.
In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me;
turn your ear to me and save me.
Be my rock of refuge,
to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel (Ps. 71:1-4).
Twice, God is referred to as a refuge. Twice, God is called “my rock.” Twice, God is called on to “save me” and another twice to “deliver me.” There’s a reason for all these doublings. God is in fact my rock, my refuge. I do in fact need him to save me, to deliver me.
God isn’t an add-on. He’s essential, because my needs are very real. And it’s God who will save me. Not my savvy. Not my smarts. Not some cool new technique.
If age has taught me anything, it’s that there are things I can figure out that I didn’t think I could figure out before — I have real God-given capabilities. And there are things I can’t figure out that I used to think I could figure out — I have real human shortcomings. I still don’t always know which is which, but it’s clearer than it was before.
For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD,
my confidence since my youth.
From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
I will ever praise you.
I have become a sign to many;
you are my strong refuge.
My mouth is filled with your praise,
declaring your splendor all day long.
Do not cast me away when I am old;
do not forsake me when my strength is gone (Ps. 71:5-9).
Here, we get some references to age that look backward: “since my youth,” “from birth,” and “from my mother’s womb.” And then looking forward: “when I am old” and “when my strength is gone.” This would leave the psalmist somewhere in between.
Experience has taught him that God has been with him all along and he hopes will be with him for the rest of his life. I don’t think he’s actually afraid that God will cast him away when he’s old or forsake him when his strength is gone. Rather, this is what we humans do to our elderly and he’s looking forward to a future with God that is different from the future others will have for him.
God is the basic context for our lives. There is no one and nothing we deal with more than God. He’s been with us before we were born. He’s been with us at every milestone in the journey of our lives and all the unheralded moments in between.
God doesn’t treat us the way we treat athletes whose skills fall off with age and who get cut from the teams they’ve devoted themselves to. God doesn’t park us in extended care facilities with the forgotten and unvisited. In our function-oriented world, those who can’t contribute anymore are marginalized. Not so with God, since he doesn’t base his relationship with us on what we can do for him (no matter how hard so many try to do just that).
Living into my God-context is simpler when I am less functional, less rushed.
But bringing up the possibility of being forsaken by God leads back into the current dilemma, which includes precisely the accusation by his haters that God has indeed forgotten him.
For my enemies speak against me;
those who wait to kill me conspire together.
They say, “God has forsaken him;
pursue him and seize him,
for no one will rescue him.”
Do not be far from me, my God;
come quickly, God, to help me.
May my accusers perish in shame;
may those who want to harm me
be covered with scorn and disgrace (Ps. 71:10-13).
If God has forsaken him, then he’s fair game for those out to get him.
Without God, I am hopeless and helpless. Without God, everything rests on my shoulders. Without God, I really can’t count on anyone other than myself since no one else can be there for me all the time. Without God, I’m screwed.
We never grow out of this. We don’t mature and need God less. We mature and become that much more aware of how immensely we need God. Vastly.
So, our unnamed psalmist asks God to make sure he’s not far away, to hightail it to the psalmist’s side to bring some help.
This will do three things. First, it’ll provide the presence and the help that’s needed. Second, it’ll prove the haters wrong. Third, by doing the first two things, it’ll remove shame from the psalmist and put it on the haters instead.
In contrast to the haters, who will perish in shame, the psalmist has never been hopeless, because he’s never been God-less. He may have felt that way, but it’s never been true.
As for me, I will always have hope;
I will praise you more and more.
My mouth will tell of your righteous deeds,
of your saving acts all day long —
though I know not how to relate them all.
I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, Sovereign LORD;
I will proclaim your righteous deeds, yours alone.
Since my youth, God, you have taught me,
and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.
Even when I am old and gray,
do not forsake me, my God,
till I declare your power to the next generation,
your mighty acts to all who are to come (Ps. 71:14-18).
God is our always context. He is our always need. He is our always help. Because of all that, he is also our always hope.
The more we have experienced God’s always presence and have received his always help to our always need, the more we realize we can count on him. Our hope for the future is based on the realities of God’s goodness and covenant loyalty in the past.
A mature hope arises from a lifetime of trouble that has been met by a lifetime of grace.
And so this always hope becomes an always praise. The trustworthy God is the praiseworthy God.
The psalmist says he can talk of God’s saving deeds all day long. This is yet another aspect of a mature faith. All those troubles and all of that grace experienced have turned into a long list of stories. The idea of grace no longer inspires because the idea has been replaced by stories of grace. Experience doesn’t replace Scripture, but theological narrative supersedes theological ideas, being richer and actually fleshed out.
Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens,
you who have done great things.
Who is like you, God?
Though you have made me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth
you will again bring me up.
You will increase my honor
and comfort me once more (Ps. 71:19-21).
This righteousness, piled sky high, isn’t just conceptual. It’s been witnessed. Because of that, it can be counted on again.
God is holy. He is different. There is none like him. He stands alone. And what is implied by “Who is like you, God?” is that no one else can be so implicitly trusted, because no one else has the same track record as God. And this is true even though troubles seem to come from God’s hand.
The same God who is the subject of “you who have done great things” is the subject of “you have made me see troubles, many and bitter.” This seems like a contradiction. And yet this is also the wisdom of a mature faith. Somehow God is gracing us in both the laughter and the tears. And it’s the one who has walked long with God who accepts both the laughter and the tears and the God who gives them both.
We can do this because we know he is the God of resurrection. Yes, even here in the Psalms, we encounter resurrection language and not just a prophetic passage referring to the resurrection of Jesus. This is us, you and me, that the psalmist is talking about. This is the psalmist himself.
“You will restore my life again” doesn’t necessarily point to resurrection, but the next line does: “from the depths of the earth/you will bring me up.” This is Sheol, the grave, the place of the dead. Only one-way tickets are issued to that destination. You only go down. And yet, God will bring him up, will bring us up.
We believe it because we have seen it. We’ve witnessed numerous mini resurrections throughout our lives and know that even death cannot stop the God of resurrection. And so, in the words of the Wendell Berry poem, we “practice resurrection.”
We accept little deaths knowing that God’s life will have the final word.
And so we practice praise, knowing that just as death is swallowed up in life, so our painful prayers will be swallowed up in praise.
I will praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, my God;
I will sing praise to you with the lyre,
Holy One of Israel.
My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praise to you —
I whom you have delivered.
My tongue will tell of your righteous acts
all day long,
for those who wanted to harm me
have been put to shame and confusion (Ps. 71:22-24).
These last three verses are all future oriented. The praise isn’t happening yet. Praise will happen. Shouting will happen. The tongue-telling will happen.
The inverted world is in the process of reversion. The shame and confusion I experience will end up on those who caused it. Justice will reign. And my tongue will be unstoppable, spilling out the joy uncontainable within me.
Dr. James Houston of Regent College said, “Passion is the temptation of youth. Cynicism is the temptation of middle age. And self-pity is the temptation of old age.” To put this another way, the “I can do anything” of self-confident youth often becomes the “so much for my dreams” of disillusioned middle age and the “they got in the way of my potential” of bitter old age. But we needn’t fall for them.
A mature faith practices resurrection because it never loses hope, knowing the one who has life and all good things in his hands and shares them with us.