You Sweep Us Away like a Dream

AM Psalm 87, 90 • PM Psalm 136
Num. 13:31-14:25 • Rom. 3:9-20 • Matt. 19:1-12

Psalm 90 surprises me with how it works in my depths—below words, below my concern with the angry God. The passage ignores my attempts to wind up God into a nice round ball of lovely yarn. But I realize these things too late—the poetry’s strange gift of longing and wonder had already dropped into my lap. Sneaky stuff.

The psalm takes the tragic fragility of life and rolls it around on its tongue like wine—or a dark spice somehow familiar. Yes, it appeals to an elevated Godhead with little to no earthly obligation—to my endless consternation. But these are afterthoughts. Instead, down deeper, I am left with the ancient human longing. (I decide this is the author’s purpose and I make a mental note —sometimes stop thinking and just let the words do their magic.) So I recall Rudolph Otto’s mysterium tremendum—I am out of my head now. It makes me shiver. And again, there is C. S. Lewis poking rudely at the inconsolable longing:

I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell… (from The Weight of Glory)

The existential longing and wonder conjured up by Psalm 90 messes with me—my thinking, my pride, my expectations, my hope for justice, and my hope to be spared too much of it. Nonetheless, here is a gift of minor key song which pries open that little space where wonder, longing, and grace might live.

Written by David Orth

Also wonders what his cats are thinking. Cat secrets. And they are not talking.