They Curse, You Bless
“While they curse, may You bless. May those who attack me be put to shame, but may Your servant rejoice.”
I have been writing weekly blog posts that each feature a song on my EP, ‘Those Other Psalms’, and this will be my final one of the lot. Psalm 109 is an imprecatory psalm, and it gets especially imprecatory: “May his days be few… May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow… May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes… May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children… May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.”
Whoa, David. Whoa.
These are extreme, even for someone who is crazy enough to write songs based on imprecatory psalms. I chose not to include these particular lyrics in my song because they are a bridge too far for me — and as far as things I can relate to, I actually can’t honestly pray these lines. I haven’t found myself in any situation so dire that my conscience would allow me to speak these words and let them hang in the air. But I think I can imagine how helpless one must feel in order to pray them. When I put myself in the position of someone who lives in a country that has been invaded by a giant military, and all of a sudden, my city is in ruins, and all my friends and family have either fled, are forced into combat, or have died — I might pray all of these things in earnest. And for people who have lived in this reality, I am thankful that these prayers exist in the Bible — it proves to us that God does not turn away from our extreme pain. He doesn’t cast us aside or abandon us when we are at our worst. These thoughts are welcome in His presence. (They’re not where anyone wants to dwell forever, and they need to stay in their proper place — but God does not reject our cries of desperation.)
Photo taken from our trip to the Grand Canyon
But oh, the sentiment that David expresses, right in the throws of all this chaos: “While they curse, may You bless”.
Imagine the level of bravery it would take to maintain that level of optimism — to pray those imprecatoriest of imprecatory things, and then expect God to bless. I’ve never read Barack Obama’s book, ‘The Audacity of Hope’, but the title of it feels appropriate here. David had a relentless and audacious sense of hope. He trusted in the character of God — that ultimately God is good, and therefore, God will bless.
This is another level of beauty that we find in the imprecatory psalms: even our darkest thoughts can’t cancel out God’s faithfulness and His character. What a picture of approaching the throne of grace with confidence!
Can I follow in David’s example of radical honesty and also unrelenting trust in the goodness of God? Can I hold onto [even a sliver of] hope in the character and faithfulness of God when I’ve experienced the darkest parts of humanity?
About the album artwork…
This EP had three main themes that I wanted to portray visually:
Imprecatory psalms — something I’ve explained quite thoroughly at this point.
Homemade — I could have recorded this EP in the studio, but I wanted it to feel raw, homemade, and rough around the edges, because that seems truer to the content matter. I even intentionally left little imperfections in each of these songs: moments where the timing of the harmonies don’t line up totally, finger noise in my guitar, and I even let a take of guitar that was slightly out of tune stay in there. These songs don’t sound as clean as my other songs (because Bryan Vanderpool is a million times better than me), but I wanted it that way. And I also wanted the album artwork to look a little bit homemade too.
Summer — I feel like these songs have a little bit of a summer-y vibe to them. Plus, it had a mid-July release date: peak summer.
We went on a family vacation to Arizona right after I wrapped up the production on this EP, and while we were there, I explained to Matt these three themes I wanted to portray in the album artwork. He pulled out his phone and showed me this photo he took earlier that day: a bright green cactus in front of a pink brick wall. It dawned on me that the cactus is the imprecatory psalms of the plant world! — also, the fact that Matt had taken the photo on his phone felt very homemade, and the colors of the photo felt very summer-y. Check, check, check.
About that banjo…
If you can barely play the banjo and you only own a pretty crappy banjo that you somehow made crappier when you restrung it… should you play banjo on your EP? Allie Crummy says yes. My defense? Sufjan Stevens. Take a listen and judge all you want. Curse, even… God will bless.