Clamor

Well, we're back, and Christmas is two days past. Vacation was good. Christmas was good. And I'll probably get a few photos posted soon but am trying to upload to a photo site first just so I can get that ball rolling. It was strange coming home with 3 days to Christmas. It almost came and went too fast with us being gone so long this year. But I enjoyed it anyway. Despite the post-Christmas clutter of plastic, paper and boxes around the house, I sat down this morning trying to ignore it in hopes of spending a little time reading, something I need to get back into more solidly. Not officially a New Year's resolution or anything, let's just call it "renewing my day-to-day goals" instead.

I was reading from our Spanish-English Bible today because we recently left my favorite Bible at a church we were visiting, and though I miss our regular Bible, I've really enjoyed reading some of this in Spanish, particularly the Psalms. The English translation is King James, but I think it's even a different KJV than what I grew up on because some of the language isn't familiar to me. I've been going through one Psalm at a time, reading the English first, then the Spanish, then flitting back to the English again on the Spanish words I don't recognize to help with their translation. Without having the English there, I wouldn't get near as much out of understanding the text, but doing it this way - kind of reading between the languages - has really been refreshing. I remember Buechner one time was talking about that, encouraging people to read scripture in other languages to help it come alive. It's a great idea. This morning, I was reading Psalm 121 then Psalm 103, and I came across the phrase - "Con mi voz clame' a Jehova'..." (Ps. 103:4a)

Clame'... Or with more emphasis - Yo clame'. Translation? "I clamored... With my voice, I clamored unto the Lord." More commonly known as "I cried unto the Lord for help, and he heard me from his holy hill." Clamor... What a great word. Clamor, as a verb, is even better. It made me think of a phrase Jeff used recently: "Only the squeaky wheel gets the oil." Also the parable of the widow and the judge in Luke 18 where the widow unrelentingly pursues the unjust judge, pleading her case again and again, until finally he relents just for the sake of silence. It also made me think of the resounding gongs and clanging cymbals of I Corinthians 13; maybe sometimes it is okay to be an instrument out of tune. "I cried to the Lord" carries such general meaning, a more restrained meaning, more civilized, more vanilla. It's not so mild as "calling" to the Lord, but it certainly isn't as strong as "clamoring." Clamor sounds like desperation, maybe even chaos. It's angular and jagged and abrasive. It sounds like screeching tires and honking horns, nails on a chalkboard, infants crying from hunger... Desperate people clamor. And we are not yet desperate, not desperate to the point of clamor anyway. Most Americans, most Christians, most times. Will we ever be? Will we ever need to be? Will we always be so provided for?

Hagar clamored when she sent her only son to sit away from her, out of her sight under a shade tree in the desert, unable to watch him die of hunger and thirst; God heard her clamor. Mordecai clamored when Haman sentenced the entire people of Israel to mass destruction for something so small as an insult to his misplaced pride; God heard his clamor. David clamored and received a piece of Saul's cloak. Mary and Martha clamored and received their brother back from the dead. Tamar clamored and Daniel and the prophets and the woman with the issue of blood... There are times when those who love God are threatened with fear or death, and they are filled with a deep and unknowable peace; their prayer is quiet and still and steadfast. There are other times when this simply isn't so, times when prayer, Christian or otherwise, is a clutching, clawing, bleeding animal and not a clear and pristine, smooth running stream. Even Christ in Gethsemane, for crying out loud! I mean, come on... He's bleeding God's sweet blood his prayer is so fervent! It may be the very picture of clamor itself. I guess to answer my own question, I think there are times when even we are desperate in our pursuit of God, even with all our provision. Or at least there are times when we pray with some level of desperation, when our noise is loud and raucous and uncontrollable, times when eloquence is drowned, logic is lost and no word or thought seems true but - "Help me, God, help me." I think of friends and family who have lost loved ones or have experienced extreme sickness, people we've prayed for, desperately pursuing a favorable response from God. I think of New Orleans and New York and the fume of prayer that must have been rising over those cities in their days of disaster, of Virginia Tech and Columbine. These times, though, are relatively few, and to some extent I thank God for that because it means for the most part we have dwelt in safety. I think too of strangers I have encountered, even recently, whose very persona screamed of desperation, like a clawing in darkness. I pray their clawing is a desperate pursuit in a godward direction. It's enough to make me tremble; how can God not hear? God hears clamor if it's a true calling out of this heap of chaos we're humanly bound to.

Desperate people, desperate prayer, desperate pursuit... Are we so desperate? And is it enough to only be so desperate in times of crisis? Is it unrealistic to think that we could pursue God equally as hard for life itself as for a mere touch from his hand this day, for a word, a light, for illumination? Doesn't seem natural, does it?

Comments

[Solomon Bettencourt]

[this is good] Quite right! It seems to me it is very good idea. Completely with you I will agree.