Christopher Bentley

Dear Friends,

I am so honored to join you today as a new contributor to Daily Bread.

I’ll confess, I almost skipped today’s Psalm. I certainly didn’t think I’d be pulling it out into the light and reflecting on it. Yet, here we are. 

It just so happened that shortly after reading Psalm 69, I heard a conversation between cultural historian Kate Bowler and theologian N.T. Wright in which they discussed the Psalms of Lament as the scripture passages most helpful in times of great suffering. Intrigued, I went back to read the Psalm in new light.  

I love the Psalms. What a gift it is to hear them breathed into life by our choir each week. And yet, I approach a lament like this with trepidation. My first impulse is to look away. It’s painful to be invited into such suffering and anguish. 

But this stormy lament is intimate. An act of trust and vulnerability. A reminder that God desires all parts of us. Richard Rohr often says: God doesn’t love us because we’re good, God loves us because God is good. In other words, there’s no use in hiding our anger and frustration from God (incredibly, even when that anger is directed toward God). The very best we can do in dark times is to offer up our anger, our grief, our suffering to Christ. 

N.T. Wright shares that “suffering in prayer is mysteriously part of the way in which what happened on the Cross is being turned into living, spirit-driven prayer”. We are connected to the glorious humanness of Jesus in times of deep anguish and when God seems silent. I tremble at this realization.

God finds us and loves us in and through our times of deep despair. The false armor fails, the spiraling mind exhausts itself and in this tender space God breaks through. Even a tiny spark of Light captures our attention in the deepest dark. 

In this Psalm, David seems to realize this, too. His lament and suffering moves from pleas for retribution against his enemies to anger and complaint and then abruptly—a spark—and hope is rekindled:

But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high.
I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. 

—Psalm 69:29-30

Here’s to sparks, friends.

Peace,

—Christopher