In Trouble

In Holy Week we follow Jesus, who walks down from the Mount of Olives and straight into trouble. The trouble that surrounds him once inside the holy city relates to the trouble you have known.  You and Jesus are people stricken and acquainted with grief. Led by Isaiah’s poetry, picture Jesus and you entering together, quoting the prophet:

The Lord God helps me; …he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me. (Isaiah 50:6, 8-9)

From an older source, David, King of Israel, we recite Psalm 31 on Palm Sunday. It describes an experience of helplessness and hope for rescue. Here are a couple of verses from it:

Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; *
my eye is consumed with sorrow,
and also my throat and my belly.

For my life is wasted with grief,
and my years with sighing; *
my strength fails me because of affliction,
and my bones are consumed. (Psalm 31:9 &10)

The degree of trouble varies in our lives, but no one is immune. We are all frail and vulnerable when conditions are grave—our lives are threatened. The experience of Jesus in the Passion reveals God’s solidarity with us, and our suffering constitutes our identification with the Savior. He is God; he is the God who willingly suffered. Psalm 31, with its expressiveness of misery, with its straining hope, is perfect to launch us into Holy Week and the Mystery of Christ’s Passion. The psalm prompted me to write these lines of free verse, which I share without comment.

Dare I Even Hope

My eyes
my throat
my belly
my bones

Burning, parched, twisted, and aching
What is left that is not engulfed in grief?
What consumption takes me
swallows and digests me?

I had strength. It has failed.
I had a life; it lies now limply in a pile.
Bones that had framed a figure, upright,
can’t hold me, now—they ache
inert among sinews and flesh.
Years that structured a story of meaning
now seem pointless vapor, expiring breath

Will my eyes ever brighten again,
my core flex and tighten to hold me up straight?
Will my bones give structure and allow me to stand,
my throat revive as a chamber to let out a good word?

If so, it will come from mercy beyond:
rescue, from the Good One
responding to trust.

Done in, I lie weakly
as strong foes approach
and I cry out to you, powerful Healer
My times, if I have them, are in your hands

I strain O Deliverer to picture you, coming.
I dream of restoration, in hope,
for bright eyes, strong throat,
firm belly, solid bones, at last
to stand and declare your praise.

                                — David W. Price, April 2022