Psalm 22 - Burnt Out
I’ve been there and so many others have as well. Burned out, empty, broken. It happens as a result of many factors - sometimes they can be identified while other times they remain a mystery. Tire Discounters helped me with visualizing this when I was about to pull out of a parking lot early Friday morning.1
Here’s the still image of the same
Something is missing. A light has burned out and the name sign is no longer whole.
But I feel like the video is more accurate to this Psalm because this Psalm holds multiple things. It holds the absolute devastation and emptiness that comes from a feeling of being burnt out, abandoned, or as the Psalm starts out with...forsaken. The first half of the Psalm is really hard to read especially if one doesn’t have a time that resonates with it. As I shared when I started, there’s a lot that echoes for me in this Psalm to experiences I have had - some that were momentary and others that were over a period of years. The words in Fischer’s version are...well, harsh, but resonant.
I am poured out like water...
My heart melts like wax...
I feel my body dissolving into death’s dusts...
I am hounded by my isolation...am cast off and encircled...
So now in this very place I call on you.
There is no one left.
That’s just a small part of it. But especially that last part - goodness I know feelings like that and I know so many others who have felt that way and feel that way today. It is an empty, burnt out, lonely, scary place to be.
But at the same time, there’s a shift in this Psalm just as the light comes back on in the sign in the video. Like Psalm 21, there’s a middle passage that seems to be the turning.
Do not be far from me
Be the center
Of the center
Of the circle
Be the strength of that center
And from there the Psalm shifts to recounting the stories of when God was present, when God was faithful, when life did not feel as it feels presently.
All those who question and struggle
Will dawn with your light
For they will know
You have not scorned the poor and despised...
From them your spark has never been hidden...
You heard and answered and ennobled them...
May your heart live forever...
For all that is is your domain.2
I am grateful that I do not find myself in the burnt out space today but I ache for those who are. I hold them (you) in my love, my prayers, my heart. I ache for you who feel alone. You who feel abandoned. You who feel erased. You who grieve. You who are hurting. You who are burdened. You who are oppressed. You who are wronged. You who could write these same words as were written in this Psalm so long ago. I hold you. I don’t just promise, “well, it will get better” but I say I am with you in it right now in the hope that it will get better. But even if it doesn’t, I and so many others are here. You are not alone.
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
Massive shift in tone ahead…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the piece of drift wood at the nearby lake that looked remarkably like the face-huggers from the Alien(s) movie franchise. To review, click here. Here’s the latest update via photo and text exchange with our younger humans…
Me: One day, archaeologists will be excavating the lake here and they will come across the remains of a creature found nowhere else on earth. Fare thee well face hugger
Son: 🫡
Daughter: Sad
Son: May it be scuttling around in the sky
Me: And then they’ll turn it over to scientists who will decide to try to extract its DNA to resurrect it…And suddenly a new movie franchise is born
Son: Jurassic Park vs Alien vs Predator
Son: Just send me my royalties now
I love my family…
I was stopped and not driving when I videoed this. :-)
Fischer, Norman. Opening To You: Zen Inspired Translations of the Psalms pp 31-33
Just picked up a used copy of Fischer. Thanx