When Trouble Comes

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

- Psalm 13:5-6

Two January’s ago, I went through a period of what I ended up calling “situational dysthymia.” The opening of this Psalm reminded me of that time: wondering how long it would last and having a sense of helplessness about how I felt (v1), not always able to sense God’s presence (v1), having to counsel myself to live a normal life every day (v2), taking longer to fall asleep (v3), not feeling up to being with people (v4).

At the time I took notes from Phil Ryken’s When Trouble Comes that were helpful—he looked at the lives of Spurgeon, Elijah, David, Job, Isaiah, and Jesus and wrote, “all of this leads me to accept seasons of doubt, discouragement and depression as a normal part of life in a fallen world.” It’s okay to be unhappy and say that you are unhappy. Keep on keeping on, he says: tell faithful friends and get support from them, stay in the Word, eat something healthy every day even if your appetite is low, exercise, try to be present with your children, take walks in nature, keep going to church.

While the first four verses are David’s present reality—we learn that it’s normal to feel this way and okay to talk with God openly about it—in the last two verses, David speaks only in terms of the past and the future. It’s another chiasm, the past flanking the future. In the Hebrew, there are only eight words:

batach (but I have trusted)- lit, “to set one’s hope and confidence in”

checed (in your steadfast love)- lit, “to show oneself to be good or kind”

leb (my heart)- lit, “the inner part of me, including mind, will, feelings”

giyl (shall rejoice)- lit, “to spin around under the influence of a violent emotion”

yeshuw’ah (in your salvation)- lit, passive participle of “save or deliver”

shiyr (I will sing)- lit… to sing

Yehovah (unto the Lord)- the unpronounced name of God, from root “to exist”

Gamal (because he has dealt bountifully with me)- lit, “to treat well”

Interestingly, the last word of the Psalm, gamal, is translated elsewhere “wean” (as in baby) or “ripen” (as in fruit); it has the connotation of cherishing and warming. David looks back, to God’s kindness and gamal, and ahead, to joy and singing. Not only perhaps in the sense of musical worship, but as he was a composer and musician, also in the sense of not losing who he is, his vocation and sense of self. All of it frames this alliterative yeshuw-ah – yehovah: the God who simply exists, beyond and above all situations. The one by whom we are delivered. 

How do I equip myself to be able to pray as David when times of trouble come? Can I recount the gamal of God in my life? Have I allowed myself to experience and express sorrow and giyl? How well do I know this Yehovah? David is honest about his present, but he also sees that God is the sovereign God of all time. He sees he is not able to save himself. He is able to experience his feelings, yet realize that there has been, and will be, a savior and a reality beyond them.