Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

From Pit to Praise

By Sheri Blackmon

Psalm 42

December 26, 1999

I have the privilege this morning of having the last word of the millenium at Moorpark Presbyterian Church. And so I would like to talk about something that we must all wrestle with: how to deal with loss. One of the most common challenges we face as followers of Jesus Christ is keeping the faith in the midst of experiencing loss of various kinds. Psalm 42 addresses this issue. (Read)

It is unclear exactly what kind of loss the psalmist was facing. The language is too general to describe his situation with certainty. He was likely a refugee forced to dwell far away from his land: far from Jerusalem and the Temple where he may have had a high office. He now lives in a place later called Caesarea Philippi from which the springs of the Jordan River rush into the valley in roaring cataracts from the southern slopes of Mt. Hermon. He pines away, longing for the time he had been privileged to spend in God’s house. He remembers the happiness of intimate communion with God, a happiness he’s now deprived of. He has to endure the scorn, oppression and sarcastic questions of his enemies. This makes him aware of his feelings of loss and separation from God. And so in desperation and emotional turmoil he contends with God.

He feels God is absent (vv.1-2). His soul stretches itself out in prayer to God like a hind in the blazing heat of summer stretches its neck as far as possible, searching in vain for water in a dry brook. He looks around for the living God whose close contact he has experienced in the past—who has satiated his thirst in the past. The psalmist’s exile has made him aware of what’s really important--as loss often does for us--and his pain is increased when he realizes he no longer has—or thinks he has—what’s important, namely God’s presence to take him through this time, to give him the old sense of joy and purpose.

His tears have become his food (v.3). This is a hyperbole for the very depths of grief and trouble. His grief is aggravated by the sarcastic question "Where is your God?" (a question many have asked in this troubled century). They conclude God is either powerless or not concerned with suffering.

The first thing he does is to " remember" (v. 4). This is used in the Old Testament a lot to show an intentional focus on what God has done, often a decision to focus on the positive in negative experiences. This is what contemporary author Gary Smalley has called "treasure hunting:" finding lessons of enduring value and worth in the midst of the ruins of loss. Remembering points up the importance of rehearsing the pleasant past and recalling God’s involvement with us. It gives inspiration during a dark period.

In verse five he then seems to rebuke himself with "Why are you downcast, O my soul?" He reaches the point beyond suffering and distress by arousing his soul to "wait for God," to have faith, even though the answer is not at hand. There is, however, a glimmer of hope. But this comforting thought is not able to drive away the pain completely (v.6).

The psalmist will do a lot of growing in this psalm as he speaks of the pit and praise. The pit is the dismal place of loss, and praise comes when we see ourselves under the protective wings of God’s presence. The psalmist will come to realize that God is not just in Jerusalem—the old and familiar—but even in the new and alien places, the hostile and dark experiences we go through as believers. We’re never the same as in our pre-pit life, though we often long to return.

The movement from pit to praise is often not a once and for all event. In fact, both grief and joy can coexist at the same time.

Dr. R. A. Torrey founder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, lost his twelve-year-old daughter in an accident. The day after the funeral he got up in the morning and went for a walk. A wave of grief broke over him anew, the loneliness of her absence, the terrible feeling knowing they would never hear her laughter again, never see her face, never witness her growth. He couldn’t take it. And he leaned against the street light and he looked up and began to pray. This is what he experienced: "And just then the fountain, the Holy Spirit, whom I had in my heart, broke forth with such power as I think I had never experienced before. And it was the most joyful moment I had ever known in my life! It is an unspeakably glorious thing to have within you a fountain ever springing up, springing up, springing up, ever springing up 365 days in every year, springing up under all circumstances." (Michael Green, Ill’s for Biblical Preaching)

Joy in the midst of loss comes as a gift from God, not a self-generated emotion borne of positive thinking. This is the comfort the Holy Spirit brings in the midst of difficulty. The psalmist’s experience reminds us that we can affirm God’s presence even when we feel distant and removed from God.

We should not, however, minimize this struggle and tension of pit and praise through denial or thinking we can move on before we have truly dealt with our losses.

In her book Life Is Tough but God Is Faithful singer, speaker, and author Sheila Walsh writes about the loss of her father when she was a child. A brain thrombosis had left him weak and confused, and for eleven months her family had to watch as he deteriorated. He went from being warm and gentle to being cold and unpredictable. He began to have what she calls "brain storms" which put him into a rage and gave him the strength of three men. When he came out of these rages he would cry in remorse.

One day when she was four she sat by the fire playing with her puppy and looked up and saw her dad coming toward her with a strange look in his eyes. He raised his cane, and at that moment she knew that he was going to hit her. In sheer panic, she pulled the cane away from him, and he lost his balance and fell. He lay there moaning, and she was sure it was all her fault. Eventually, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he hung on for a few more months and died.

Sheila struggled with self-loathing and nightmares and buried a piece of herself for many years. She blotted out that horrible night they took her father away and substituted a fantasy for it. She writes: "Throughout my teenage years it seemed we had an unwritten rule in our family not to talk too much about my dad because I couldn’t handle it. At times I would fall into deep depression as I tried to cope alone with my bottled-up feelings. Sometimes I would sit looking straight ahead as my mum begged me to talk to her and not shut her out. Inside, I felt like screaming, but I just couldn’t express my feelings. I felt as if I had fallen into a pit too deep to crawl out of, and no one could reach me." (p. 34) Eventually, Sheila Walsh experienced healing, but it was only after a severe depression forced her to admit herself to a psychiatric hospital. Her story reminds us that it is crucial to deal with our losses and not allow ourselves to fall into the shallow comfort of denial.

So how do we deal with our losses in helpful and God-honoring ways?

1. Acknowledge the process. We get depressed for a reason—don’t fight it. While you can never know exactly how someone else feels, you can help them discover how they feel. Joseph Bayly writes in The Last Thing We Talk About:

"I was sitting, torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly, he said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he’d go away. He finally did.

Another came and sat beside me. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go."

Depressed and grieving people need to be understood. They need to talk when they are ready, to tell their story in their way, to make their case against life as this psalmist does.

2. Identify the loss trigger. It is important to list your losses and give yourself time to grieve them. We deal with many kinds of losses. Some we call real losses (people, jobs, possessions), some abstract losses (reputation, esteem, expectations, dreams) others are imagined losses (young college graduate may take over your job; you imagine you are being snubbed) and then we have threatened losses (waiting for test results from a breast lump or worrying that a job you are hoping for won’t materialize. The psalmist’s loss was partly a real loss (home) and an abstract loss (God’s familiar presence).

Abstract, imagined, and threatened losses are no less real than real losses, though they are harder to detect. The first step is gaining awareness of the type of loss you are experiencing and understanding each facet of it. We do this through talking, writing, prayer or another form of reflection. Part of this awareness includes an assessment of what the loss means to you, how deeply it effects you, and what it means to let go of it.

You may object that this merely prolongs the feelings of depression. The fact is that fighting off or denying "low" points only prolongs the grieving process.

We have a difficult time with this in our high-speed culture. In Israel’s culture, for example, when someone died, professional mourners would gather and a wail would start. They played instruments, cried aloud, threw dust in the air, and tore their clothing. They continued this for about thirty days. The society "gave permission" to express grief. We must do the same for ourselves, our families and our church family.

3. Put a time limit on losses. The greater the loss, the more time we must allow to grieve. A speeding ticket might upset us for eight hours, the loss of a pet for a month or two, the loss of a job for three to six months, the death of an intimate may be felt acutely for up to two years.

4. Face the reality of the loss. Do so with courage as the psalmist does. Begin to confront denial. This may involve asking questions as the psalmist does. Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? (v.9) Should we hesitate to ask them because we are supposed to have all the answers? Satan loves it when we are silent, afraid to ask questions that can lead us to understanding. Maybe we don’t like to ask them because they leave us vulnerable, weak and needy. They force an honesty that requires us to live with unresolved issues. But this is where faith comes into play.

Living our lives with certain things unresolved is what faith is all about. There are many things we cannot explain. We may gain some understanding through the years, but only in a partial way. But we know that Jesus was present with us in our losses and trials, sustaining and guiding us. Elizabeth Elliot writes: "To be a follower of the Crucified Christ means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss . . . The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christain can evade this stark fact. It is not by any means an easy thing to recognize, within a given instance of personal loss, the opportunity it affords for participation in Christ’s own loss."

5. Put the loss in a larger perspective. This is how we keep our faith in God’s presence alive. Notice, this is the last step not the first.

The great composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) lived much of his life in fear of deafness. He was concerned because he felt the sense of hearing was essential to creating music of lasting value.

When Beethoven discovered that the thing he feared most was coming rapidly upon him, he was almost frantic with anxiety. He consulted doctors and tried every possible remedy. But the deafness increased until at last all hearing was gone.

Beethoven finally found the strength he needed to go on despite his great loss. To everyone’s amazement, he wrote some of grandest music after he became totally deaf. With all distractions shut out, melodies flooded in on him as fast as his pen could write them down. His deafness became a great asset.

Discovering the larger perspective is not a once-and-for-all step, for as the psalmist did we may move from pit to praise again and again. Over time, however, we will experience a gradual resolution as we move through the predictable stages of grief and loss which psychology has identified for us (denial and shock, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, and loneliness) to acceptance.

We must remember, however, that acceptance is an important part of dealing with loss, but it is not the end. If our emotional turmoil over the death of a loved one, for example, finally ends up with our having to bow before death, we would be saying to death: "You win." The larger perspective toward death is that a day will come when everything will be made new; the dead in Christ will be raised to eternal life and we will be reunited with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

When we have One who is greater than death on our side, we believe that nothing of eternal consequence is ever lost to us. We can agree with Paul in Philippians 3:8-9: What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.

When it comes to other losses we face we have the hope that God will transform them into gains even in this life.

Elena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, says that as he wrote his memoirs, she typed, edited and nursed the work, doing everything she could to make sure it survived seizure by the government. Sakharov worked on his memoirs in Gorky, rewriting sections because they kept vanishing. Then one day he met Elena at the train station and with trembling lips told her, "They stole it."

She says he looked like a man who had just learned of the death of a close friend. But after a few days, Sakharov returned to his work. According to his wife, each time he rewrote his memoirs there was something new—something better.

God wastes nothing, but redeems, heals, and transforms our losses to show his power and bring us hope. Even in the darkest night, the most blinding pain, the most maddening frustration—when nothing makes sense anymore—we keep going because Christ is worth it all. We fight to keep the faith, affirming along with the psalmist: By day the Lord directs His love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life (v.8). . . Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him (v.11). God’s love is worth it. Hannah Whittal Smith expressed God’s love so well.

Put together all the tenderest love you know,

The deepest you have ever felt,

And the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you,

And heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world,

And then multiply it by infinity,

And you will begin, perhaps,

To have some faint glimpse of the love God has for you.

What an overwhelming statement! Does that seem real to you? Or do you hear it as something that sounds great, but when you look at your life it’s as useful as a well-worn teabag? I am beginning to get it. Just beginning.

Holding on is hard—it can seem impossible—but it is worth it, because Jesus’ love for us is worth it. Jesus held on in the face of voluntary death so that you and I could experience the forgiveness of sin, transformation and eternal life. And he will help us hold on too. No matter what happens, Jesus will guide us through our experiences of loss.