Faith & Doubt

Pentecost is famous for the loud miracle of tongues. There is a second language miracle of the same Spirit. He intercedes through wordless groans. The sigh is the prayer. You do not have to speak fluently to be heard.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. The psalmist's prayer is the prayer of an exhausted person. The help he needs is not at his level. He cannot, by his own effort, reach it. He needs to be led.

You have been waiting for the water to recede. Psalm 24 says the earth is founded on the seas. God does not wait for the chaos to evaporate before he builds. The ground was always meant to be built on the deep.

Sing to the Lord a new song. The instruction feels cruel when you are drowning. The old songs no longer fit the voice you have now. The new song is not the old song faked — it is something else entirely. Part one of Singing in the Flood.

You used to feel things. Now you feel nothing. You have not lost your faith. You have lost your feelings. These are not the same thing — and the church has, for a long time, taught us they were.

You have taken from me friend and neighbour — darkness is my closest friend. Heman was not only in the dark. He was in the dark alone. The wound of being left is its own wound. Part four of A Slow Walk Through Psalm 88.

Anger at God is not the failure of faith. Apathy is. The angry person is still on the line. The apathetic person has hung up. Part three of A Slow Walk Through Psalm 88.

Most lament psalms turn at some point — yet I will trust, but you, O Lord. Psalm 88 has no pivot. It ends in the dark. The editors knew, and they left it. Part two of A Slow Walk Through Psalm 88.

Heman was a chief musician of the temple. He led worship for the king. By every external measure, his life was working — and he wrote one of the bleakest sentences in the Bible. Darkness is my closest friend. Part one of A Slow Walk Through Psalm 88.