...Lord have mercy...

“1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;

let my cry for help come to you.

2 Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress.

        Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.

3 For my days vanish like smoke;

  my bones burn like glowing embers.

4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;

        I forget to eat my food.

5 Because of my loud groaning

        I am reduced to skin and bones.

6 I am like a desert owl,

        like an owl among the ruins.

7 I lie awake; I have become

        like a bird alone on a roof.

8 All day long my enemies taunt me;

        those who rail against me use my name as a curse.

9 For I eat ashes as my food

        and mingle my drink with tears

10 because of your great wrath,

        for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.

11 My days are like the evening shadow;

        I wither away like grass. 

12 But you, O Lord, are enthroned for ever; your name endures to all generations.

13 You will rise up and have compassion on Zion” Psalm 102:1-13.

In Verses 1-2 the psalmist roots his/her prayer in the liturgical traditions of his/her time, but yet these verses sound like a prayer of an afflicted person. When s/he is faint s/he pours out his/her lament before the LORD.

This Psalm is a lament and moves from metaphorical expressions of personal anguish

(vv.3-7) to what causes the psalmist’s misery (vv.8-10). The psalmist concludes with a brief restatement of his anguish in v.11. The psalmist compares his life (“my days”) in verses 3 & 11 to “smoke,” “glowing embers” (v.3), withered “grass” (vv.4, 11), birds (vv.6-7), and “an evening shadow” (v.11). The metaphors express the tragic nature of our life sometimes. He experiences physical existence as “bones” (vv.3, 5), a “heart” (v.4), and “skin” (v.5). He is also very much aware that his life has a shadowy side, as it vanishes like “smoke” (v.3) and like “the evening shadow” (v.11).

So, the psalmist wastes away to mere “skin and bones” (v.5), and his enemies ridicule him (v.8). They look at him as having been abandoned by his God, and it may well be that the taunt of his enemies includes the question, “Where is your God?” Instead of blessing him and his God, they curse him and curse God (v.8).

Yet the heart and soul of the psalm is that the psalmist knows that the Lord has not rejected him because of his sin. He suffers from the full brunt of God’s “great wrath” (v.10), yet the psalmist feels as though God in His anger is like a hurricane that takes him up and throws him aside (v.10). But the psalmist knows in the end that “You, O Lord, are enthroned for ever; Your name endures to all generations. You will rise up and have compassion on Zion” (verses 12,13).

Friends, our hope has to be in God, despite our sin-filled lives. God is sovereign, He alone sits on the throne. “You, O Lord, are enthroned for ever” (verse 12)! Repent and turn back to the Lord and know that He has compassion on us all (v.13)!

Consider the words of the “Christ Prayer” we pray every day here.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.