How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me. NIVUK

There is a movement in this short psalm, from perplexity (1,2), through prayer (3,4), and into a place of peace (5,6). I guess it is a movement every believer experiences along the way. As we have ‘trials and temptations’, and face ‘trouble’, we ‘take it to the Lord in prayer’, and discover there really is no need for discouragement.

‘Agitation is brought into the place of intercession and emerges in exultation.’ Alec Motyer.

The perplexity with which this psalm opens is expressed like this in ‘The Message’:

”Long enough, God—
    you’ve ignored me long enough.
I’ve looked at the back of your head
    long enough. Long enough
I’ve carried this ton of trouble,
    lived with a stomach full of pain.
Long enough my arrogant enemies
    have looked down their noses at me.”

At times we may feel like David did. We sem to encounter the silence of heaven. But if we start there, we certainly do not have to stay there. As Warren Wiersbe observes: ‘Faith does not always give answers, but it does give encouragement.’