This week our faith family is beginning to consider, together, the sacred practice of fasting. More broadly, the Church across the world will begin the season of Lent this Wednesday. Lent is typically a season of fasting connected with repentance, purgation, and contrition—with an important catch. The season of Lent swells and crescendos towards Easter, a day of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and freedom. With all of this in mind—fasting, Lent, and the approach of Easter—let us consider Psalm 6 .
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Psalm 6 (and perhaps the aspect of the so-called ‘spiritual life’ that goes the most overlooked more generally) is the insistence that the body both contributes to and is caught up in our life-with-God. Consider the psalm’s language:
I am languishing; heal me… for my bones are troubled (v.2)
I am weary… I flood my bed with tears, drench my couch with weeping (v.6)
My eye wastes away… it grows weak (v.7)
Now, of course, this kind of language points to various emotional disturbances within in the psalmist, but, this is precisely the point: our emotional and spiritual health manifests in and is connected to, in some way, our physical well being.
More profound however are the implications: our spiritual and emotional life cannot be disconnected from our physical and material existence. My feeling is that we have a tendency to forget this and prefer an abstracted and esoteric life-of-faith, rather than the material, earthy, corporeal, physical life that Jesus embodies.
And here is our hope as it finds expression in Psalm 6: the Lord our God has “heard our cries” (v.8) has “accepted our prayers” (v.9). He has chosen to “turn… deliver… save… love” (v.4) and (precisely because the life-of-faith is not merely ideas and abstractions) God chooses to dwell with us.
Or, in the words of Jesus himself: “Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.” (Luke 24:39)
May our prayers this week be honest, grounded, and earthy… and heard in the heavens.
— Chaz Holsomback