Commentary by Dr Noel Donnelly on Ps 39 for the 2nd Sunday of Year B
Psalm 39 invites us to get into the shoes of King David. This was a real song in real time written by a real person. It’s not a prayer to God but a testimony about God. I have much to learn from it.
It starts with the experience of patience and perseverance in prayer through dark times: “I waited, I waited for the Lord!” Eventually, says David, God “stooped and he heard my cry”. God bends over towards him and removes any distance that David had felt. God lifts him out of the self-centred mire of his worrying crisis, puts him on a more secure footing and even inspires him to sing, “He put a new song in my mouth: praise be to God!”
David is amazed that this gigantic mind that had created the universe could even think about a tiny human person: he says in verse 18, “I am poor and needy; yet the LORD thinks upon me”. He learns that God isn’t really concerned about formal rituals; what God wants is an open ear, a listening for God’s word and then being motivated by it . Yes, God wants joyful obedience to the Law, his teaching, but it’s the heart, the inner motivation that counts: David exclaims “My God, I delight in your law in the depths of my heart!” (Verse 9)
David moves out from the personal stirrings in his heart, “ I proclaim your justice openly to the great assembly.” For him and for us worship leads to public action for justice. True worship means entering the presence of love, reflecting on the demands of love and going out to bring this shared love into loving practical action.
David ends with asking God to spare a thought for him, but, remembering the words in verse one, “I waited, I waited for the Lord”, his final words now in verse 17 are quite blunt , “O my God, do not be slow!”
It’s interesting to hear someone telling God to hurry up!
Ps 39: words and music Noel Donnelly (c) Kevin Mayhew. Recorded by Magdalen MacInnes.
Graphic (c) Netta Ewing
