Sing Your Blues to the Lord

Saturday Psalm: 5.17.25

Photo by Josh Sorenson via Pexels

The Saturday devotion focuses on a part of a psalm – a verse, a phrase, even a single word. We pray that it is a blessing to you.

Psalm 22
v1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

I don’t vibe with Christian radio. Not generally, at least; not as a genre. Not enough for me to turn on the local stations. It’s just too happy.

Glancing at the Christian Top 20 for iHeart, I see a bunch of songs that celebrate the happy ending after the drama of redemption. While that is the final reality for those who call Christ Lord, in the meantime we’re going to have moments like David was having when he wrote Psalm 22 – where we want to say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And whatever we’re going through, whatever David was going through, those are nowhere near as intense as what Jesus was experiencing when he quoted verse 1 from the cross.

That Christian-music Top 20, those are closing-credits songs. I want a larger dose of the soundtrack of Act 1, songs that acknowledge that some weeks seem stuck on Good Friday. I want songs where the words of Psalm 22 would be appropriate lyrics. I’m sure some of you could point me to a dozen contemporary tunes that fit my request, but it’s the balance that has always been off for me. It’s too much Gospel.

Is that an impossibility, too much Gospel? What I mean is that without the Law, the Gospel isn’t Good News, it’s just News. The relevance disappears.

And boy, do I see the relevance of the Gospel. David did too. In this psalm, he’s feeling the full effect of the Law, the full effect of the consequences that we face for our transgressions and for the corruption of Eden. He goes back and forth like Gollum vs. Smeagol between his immediate misery and his sense that God will fix things.

And by the end of the psalm … David still doesn’t have his happy ending. In verse 19, he says, “But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!” For the rest of the psalm, he predicts the praise to come, but we’re left with a cliffhanger rather than the rescue.

That’s one of the reasons Psalm 22 is one of my favorites. It’s a reminder that God wants us to stay engaged with him, even when the song in our heart is in a minor key.

P.S. If your congregation uses the lectionary psalm tomorrow, you’ll notice it’s Psalm 148, not Psalm 22. I wrote from Psalm 148, though, just three weeks ago! Rather than write from it again, I went back to one of the psalms for Good Friday.

P.P.S. Beautiful songs from Psalm 22 are possible.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.