Two Sides of the Same Psalm

This morning I was in Psalm 13...remember my commitment to plod through the Psalms this year? I was suddenly struck by the stark contrast of emotions contained within the few verses. This actually happens quite a bit in the Psalms but for some reason it just hit me as fresh revelation today. Since it's short, I will put the verses below to help understand my connecting points.

How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, "I have overcome him" and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me.

The Psalm begins with questions and a seemingly confused writer (David). He doesn't understand why it's taking so long for deliverance to come. How long O Lord? Man, I can so relate to that one. Then comes what I see as a beautiful word--but. But what? "I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me."

Here's what grabbed my attention. It is not an either / or proposition. It is an "and" proposition. What do I mean by that? I don't have to choose the mis-understanding or confusion over the rejoicing and singing. I can have both sides of the same Psalm!! I can be confused as to why God is delaying in my deliverance and at the same time wallow in praise for all the good He has done for me. It is there--I just have to choose to find it.

Last week Steve did a project for one of his classes. He had to write his life story beginning with birth and leading up to how he ended up in ministry and what's going on now. He was instructed to use different colors of sticky notes to delineate the good things and key people in his life from the bad things that have happened in his life. He used green for the good and yellow for the bad. Once he completed it he had to show it to someone and report on their observations. Since I was 12 feet from him when he completed it, he showed it to me. The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming amount of green compared to yellow.

The point? Yes, there are hard, even devastating things that happen in all of our lives. There is death, sickness, failures, not getting a promotion and the list goes on. But there are amazing things that happen to us too. There are births, graduations, influential people, professional success, spiritual victories and so much more. When I saw it all compiled on that poster board it took my breath away.

Yes, I will sing, must sing, to the Lord for He has been GOOD to me!