Psalm Chapter 74 - Maschil of Asaph

Psalm 74: How Long

The sanctuary is in ruins. Someone has taken axes to the carved work — the beautiful, painstaking craftsmanship of generations — and set fire to what remained. "There is no more any prophet," the psalmist says, and the silence of heaven is almost worse than the noise of the enemy. How long? he asks, and the question hangs unanswered. But then, in the middle of his lament, he does a remarkable thing: he remembers. He remembers the Exodus — "Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength" — and older still, the creation itself: "The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun." When the present is unbearable, the psalmist drags the past forward like evidence. The God who made summer and winter cannot finally be defeated by smoke and rubble. This is what grief-soaked faith looks like: not a denial of the ruin, but a fierce refusal to forget that the God of the ruin is also the God of the beginning.

00:00 Why Hast Thou Cast Us Off
01:00 Axes and Hammers in the Sanctuary
02:00 Thou Didst Divide the Sea
03:00 Forget Not the Voice of Thine Enemies