Complaining to God.
"I will cry unto God with my voice, and may he give ear unto me!" No historical associations can be fixed for this psalm. It is the psalm of one deeply interested in the welfare of Israel, who takes as a burden on his own heart the depressed condition of the nation, and gloomily regards it as a sign of the withdrawal of God's favour. The trouble of the writer is not persona], but relative; and with its moods may be compared the prayers of Daniel (9) and of Nehemiah (1). It is well that there should always be persons who take the burdens of their nation on their own hearts; recognize the Divine relation to national condition; and put their feeling and desire into intercessory prayer. Under some phases of Christianity there is danger of religion becoming too strictly personal—too little concerned with corporate and national life. This psalm is characteristically a psalm of complaint; it is the utterance of a man in sore perplexity and distress, who can only see the dark side even of Divine dealings. Was he right or wrong? May we say he was both right and wrong?
I. ON THE FACE OF IT, COMPLAINING MUST BE WRONG. It is usually the utterance of the discontented mind. A man complains when he imagines himself to be neglected or ill used. At the bottom of complaining generally lies an overweening sense of our own importance—the idea that we deserve better than we get. This, in part, may have affected the psalmist. Not concerning himself, but concerning the favoured nation. He complains because he thinks the nation deserved better at the hands of God than it was receiving. He was jealous for his people. Fancied desert is the root out of which complainings spring. But what desert can man or nation have before God, that can form ground of reproach? And whoever makes much of his "deserts" must be reminded of his "ill deserts." "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" Complaining of God must be wrong; because it shows
Even in the strangest experiences, submission, not complaint, is the becoming thing.
II. ON FURTHER CONSIDERATION, WE MAY SAY, COMPLAINING IS RIGHT. As a sign of confidence in God, it is right; but then it will be complaining to God, not of him. Openness before God means that we speak freely to him just what is in our thought and heart, Relief comes to us only when, in such ways, we can make full and free expression of our confidence, and tell God what we do think and feel, even though we know it is wrong to think and feel it. Reserve is the bane of friendship. There must be no reserve with God. And the very best way in which to become ashamed of our complainings is to speak them out before God. The infinite patience and gentleness towards us seems to search us through and through.—R.T.