Psalm 6 - Peaks and Valleys

This is one of those Psalms that is just heartbreaking to take in and is yet so honest and real. It is the Psalm of one who is devastated by something - an illness, an injury, life circumstances, betrayals, grief, something. It has one of those places in the Psalms that is a lament asking God, “how long?” It feels like it starts in a valley...

But it then follows up by what feels like looking up or moving upwards...a bold demand of God...”Turn now, O turn and...”

I am breaking in here becuase the word that Fischer uses here was really unexpected. In the NRSV, it asks for God to “deliver”. But Fischer puts it this way...

“Turn now, O turn, and revolve my soul.”

Revolve?

Turn it around? Turn it to a new direction? (Get it dizzy? lol) . The image I get in my mind is of someone turning another person around by the shoulders and pointing them in the correct way to go.

But the writer is back in the valley. Shortly thereafter are deep words of pain and sorrow...

I am exhausted from my sighing
Every night my bed's a lake of sorrow
A drowning flood of tears and sweat
My eyes are blind with grieving
They become weak with the force against me

Goodness, I’ve been in that valley and know so many others who have as well. It is a valley that seems to have walls that are impossible to climb.

And then, somehow the Psalm ends moving back upwards towards another peak.

My lamentation has turned into courage
Now the narrowness that pressed against me is startled
Suddenly it is turned- shamed and disarmed-

This Psalm so feels like a poetic expression of grief. Times where one’s in a valley and then, seemingly just as quick, moving to a place of acceptance or peace and then a quick turn and back down into a valley. Never a straight line but instead peaks and valleys.

I was reflecting on this Psalm as Scout and I came to a place this morning that was still completely ice covered. Someone had been out making some shapes and writing in the dusting of snow that covered the ice and there was this.

It was so unique and just fit this Psalm’s sense of peaks and valleys. There is the coldness and the danger of the ice but there is also the peeking of the warm sun above. Peaks and valleys, friends. Peaks and valleys.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

PS - Someone also made this too...not quite as theological or reflective...

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