Lent Reflection | Day 3

Esther McCurry

We encourage you to read the passage before engaging the reflection. Click on the reference below.

Psalm 6

by Esther McCurry

Full confession – I’m recently home from the Psalms retreat, so when I saw that my passage for the Lent Reflection project was Psalm 6, my first thought was “piece of cake.” But when you sit with Psalm 6, nothing about it is easy. It’s full of lament, which at first glance, seems out of place as an Easter passage. Isn’t Easter supposed to be all about victory and celebration? (Yes, it is, in case you’re wondering.) But we’re not to Easter yet; we’re in Lent. And when we read Psalm 6 through the lens of Lent, the time of year where we pause to reflect on the Jesus’ path to the cross, it brings a depth to Psalm 6 that we might not otherwise experience. 

David writes this Psalm to God in a season of hardship, when his soul is in despair. If we read this as a Lenten Psalm, we see many similarities between Jesus and David. Before he went to the cross, Jesus prayed with his Father through the night. He, like David, was “languishing” and his “soul was troubled.” Jesus, like David, called out to God to “deliver my life” and he was “weary with his moaning.” And like David, Jesus struggled through his grief and lament to acceptance and trust in his Father: “The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD accepts my prayer.” David believed that God would help him conquer his enemies and he accepted God’s will for his life; Jesus believed that God’s will was perfect, so even in the midst of what felt like abandonment and rejection, Jesus accepted God’s will for his life and went to the cross. They both claimed “for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping,” David in his life as the King of Israel and Jesus in his life and death on this earth. 

Are you in a season of grief? Go to God with your weeping and lament. God wants to meet you in that place. And once you’ve sat there for as long as you need to, then let the Father lead you from a place of lament into a posture of acceptance and trust. The LORD is listening for your weeping and he hears your plea. He has not forgotten you. In this Lenten season, turn to him and find a Father who loves you and is for you.