This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.
 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Exodus 2:1-22; 1 Corinthians 12:27–13:3; Mark 8:27–9:1

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle, reading Canticle 18 (BCP, p. 93)

I went to bed last night heavy of heart. A person very dear to me who lives in the NYC area has symptoms that have led to her being tested for the coronavirus. And a friend’s brother who lives overseas has come down with the coronavirus. I went to sleep praying for them, only to wake up several times during the night praying for myself as well: “Lord, please, you can’t let me get sick.” 

Mine must be the experience of many of us right now: hurting for others, concerned for ourselves. And it’s especially hard when the best thing we can do for each other is to keep away from each other. “Stay-at-home” sucks, but, ironically, it’s an expression of love. 

This morning’s psalm hit like a ton of bricks: “…[M]y days drift away like smoke, and my bones are hot as burning coals” (Psalm 102:3). I was struck both by how close to home the psalmist’s situation is, and also by the fact that his spiritual instinct was to process the pain by writing a song to the Lord. The psalm’s superscription (not in the BCP, but part of the ancient received text, and included in printed editions of the Bible) says it all: “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.”  

Psalm 102 is a masterful study in how to face a time like the one we are in. 

First, the psalmist cries out to the Lord about how desperate his situation is (vv. 1-11): “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop … I wither away like grass” (vv. 7,11 NRSV). 

Second, the psalmist expresses confidence that the Lord will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.” The Lord will heal, and thereby bring glory and praise to himself (vv. 12-22): 

18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,    
so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,    
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,   
to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,    
and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,    
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

Third, the psalmist turns again to his own plight, contrasting his own fragility with the Lord’s eternality (vv. 23-28): “[D]o not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations” (v. 24 NRSV). But then that last clause prompts an extraordinary turn. In the remaining verses of his song, the psalmist drops an “Easter Egg” of sorts. He celebrates God’s permanence in language that the New Testament will pick up centuries later to describe Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son whom God sends as Apostle and High Priest of his love: “[Y]ou are the same, and your years have no end” (compare Psalm 102:25-27 with Hebrews 1:10-12). 

All the world’s pain—from the psalmist’s to yours and mine, indeed, the pain of everyone living now with the disquietude of a worldwide pestilence—has been taken up into the suffering and victory of God’s Eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Be blessed. May the knowledge of that hope sustain you this day. 

Reggie Kidd+