Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness! Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you. (Psalm 143:1, ESV)
After church, I had house chores to do, along with getting a practice session in and watching the final round of the 2025 U.S. Open.
One of my least enjoyable chores is weeding. I’ll do almost anything to avoid it, but with weeds taller than some of my plants staring back at me, I grabbed my gloves, bucket, and garden shovel. I told myself one hour. You can do one hour!
The big weeds are easy to grab and pull. As I picked at the baby saplings scattering the ground, I pondered the similarities in my personal life. My big flaws, like perfectionism and not liking to ask for help, are more noticeable and easier to attend to than the smaller, more subtle ones, like my repressed anger and silent resentment.
The Lord is patient and faithful as he helps me “see the log in my own eyes” (Luke 6:42), eventually.
In this vein, I was drawn to David’s Psalm 143 titled, “My Soul Thirsts for You.” A general summary describes this Psalm as a “prayer of David asking for Divine intervention at a moment of peril (Skey Jethani, October 17, 2024).”
David earnestly seeks the Lord during a troubled period in his life … “Answer me quickly, O LORD! (verse 7) … Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD! (verse 9).” But nowhere does David say that he is deserving of the Lord’s help. David writes, “for no one living is righteous before you (verse 2b).
David’s appeals to God’s character as he prays: “In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness! (verse 1).” Later in the Psalm, he writes, “For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life! In your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble! (verse 11).”
Jethani infers that David is calling on God to be God. In distress, David ponders what God has done in the past (verse 5), he turns his soul to God (verse 6), he listens for God’s steadfast love (verse 8), he asks for the way he should go (verse 8), and he affirms his faith in God (verse 10).
Psalm 143 reminds us that when life is hard and we feel a loss of resilience or a weakened vitality, God’s “good Spirit (verse 10) keeps us stable. We know this good Spirit as the Holy Spirit, the Helper whom Jesus gives to all who follow him (John 14:26).
David wasn’t perfect, but he was a man after God’s heart. We can learn much from his example.
Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy!
Prayer: Lord, thank you for sending your Helper, the Holy Spirit, to us. Thank you for your mercy and faithfulness to meet us right where we are, in joy or distress.