Holy impatience: “How long, Lord?”
There is nothing like a global pandemic to remind you that life is short and you are but a frail mortal. A microscopic virus could send you or someone you love to the hospital or to the grave.
Moses experienced something similar with the people of Israel when they were exiled to the wilderness for forty years. He witnessed the deaths of all the older generations during their wilderness wanderings. Although he himself lived a long time, he was well aware of the shortness and frailty of human life.
As he wrote in Psalm 90:5-6, we humans “…are like grass that grows in the morning—in the morning it sprouts and grows; by evening it withers and dries up.” Even when there is not a pandemic going on, our lives are short. As Moses says, “all our days ebb away…we end our years like a sigh. Our lives last seventy years or, if we are strong, eighty years” (Psalm 90:9-10).
Professor Death
Awareness of our own mortality is a powerful teacher. Psalm 90:12 says “Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” Of course, the pandemic reminds us of our own mortality, but it also reminds us of the temporary nature of many things in our human experience.
Even the way we do church has been changed — multiple times over. Restrictions have come and gone and, for many, come back again. Churches have had to be creative and flexible. We have had to imagine new ways of doing church — perhaps even ways that have never been attempted before.
Praise God for the way many churches have been able to keep going in the midst of chaos. However, I think we all recognize that it will be hard to continue pandemic-style church indefinitely into the future. The New Testament clearly envisions that the best way of doing church is in-person, face-to-face meetings including socialization, eating and even appropriate physical contact.
When will it end?
My guess is that many of us are asking, “How much longer is this going to last?” And this is the question Moses himself asked God in Psalm 90:13: “LORD—how long? Turn and have compassion on your servants.”
Moses’ plea to God is based on his sense of the shortness of human life. He does not want to see life wasted on suffering. He is begging God to bring his current experience of suffering to a quick end. And he asks, “Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity.”
Furthermore, Moses recognizes that one impact of human mortality is the temporary nature of human accomplishment. We cannot guarantee that things we accomplish and things we build will outlast the length of our short lives. So Moses prays, “…establish for us the work of our hands — establish the work of our hands!”
Impatient prayers
Psalm 90 provides a great pattern for prayer in a pandemic. First, it is okay for us to have some holy impatience, appeal to God with some “How long, Lord?” prayers and beg God to bring our situation to a quick end. As Moses did, we can feel free to remind God of the shortness of our earthly lives.
Second, we can ask God to make up for the damage done by the pandemic. We can ask for a period of fruitful ministry after the pandemic is over – a restoration of what the pandemic has taken and then some.
Third, as we deal with the ever-changing landscape of pandemic ministry, it becomes frustrating trying to plan for the future. We have no certainty that anything we build will last. But we can plead with God to establish the work of our hands. He can take our ministry ups and downs and turn it into lasting fruit for his eternal kingdom.
Randall Curtis serves as the Rhode Island regional coordinator for the Baptist Convention of New England.