Psalm 6:4
a tough medicine
And my soul is troubled exceedingly: but thou, O Lord, how long? (Psalm 6:4 DR)
One of the marks of our fallen nature is that we tend to seek the path least resistance, which when applied to the passions and appetites of our lower nature can often land us in trouble as it is natural to go along with our cravings rather than forego them for a greater good.
However, it is also a mark of our fallen nature that we tend to need to learn things the hard way, by which I mean we forego doing something easier that would lead to virtue and end up having to do something much harder later to remedy the malady. This can be seen on a natural level in terms of health. Generally speaking, if one is moderate in what one eats, makes wise choices and does a modicum of exercise, good health outcomes ensue. Objectively these things aren’t overly onerous or even difficult. However, subjectively our appetites often have other things in mind, so to speak, especially when confronted with a culture and society which constantly bombards one with messages of indulgence and decadence.
The result is that as easy as it is to remain healthy, it is far easier to indulge one’s appetites, which makes the self-discipline for the former all that much harder. With enough time and enough poor decisions, the path to return to health then becomes markedly more difficult when it would have been far easier to never have left the path in the first place. The more arduous road then takes on the vesture of pain and suffering and requires even more sacrifice and self-discipline.
The Psalmist expresses the exasperation of the penitent who is trying to return to virtue. The suffering he experiences in his soul comes from this now more difficult path to return to God, and he senses in himself the frustration of both his failures and the seemingly delayed outcome he desires. Hence he utters the short cry to God: How long?
Here we might wonder—if God desires our sanctification (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:3), then why does it seem to take so long to achieve and so arduous a path to walk? Grating that our concupiscence is arrayed against it, our best efforts still seem to fall short and delay its advent in our hearts and souls. Like the Psalmist we might cry out: How long?
It may be that in a similar manner to how we tend to treat familiar and easy things with contempt by not even doing them when they are easily attainable, so our sanctification is something that must be worked out with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13). St. Augustine compares God’s work in us to a physician who wants his patient to understand the severity of the disease:
Who does not see represented here a soul struggling with her diseases; but long kept back by the physician, that she may be convinced what evils she has plunged herself into through sin? For what is easily healed, is not much avoided: but from the difficulty of the healing, there will be the more careful keeping of recovered health. God then, to whom it is said, And You, O Lord, how long? must not be deemed as if cruel: but as a kind convincer of the soul, what evil she has procured for herself. (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 6, 4.)
One can also see this at work in St. Paul who, when he suffered from the sting of my flesh, which he identifies as an evil spirit given by God specifically to buffet and test him. The actual malady that afflicted him is less important than the fact that it was painful enough to cause him to entreat the Lord to remove it. St. Paul says he asked three times, which is likely a Hebraic manner of speaking superlatively; that is, it was constantly on his mind and he was constantly asking for its removal. However, this entreaty was refused:
And [the Lord] said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity. (2 Corinthians 12:9 DR)
This acquaintance with grace that St. Paul attained through his suffering with great difficulty allowed him to hold in contempt the things of this world and his own appetites and desires:
Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. (ibid.)
I wanted to capture the waiting aspect of this passage, so naturally my mind went to a clack. I created a precomp and drew a simple ellipse and added a background texture for the face. I added Turbulent Displace to give it some motion and didn’t draw all the lines delineating the hours because I thought it’d be a nice style without it I was lazy.
I then drew the hands and animated them, making sure it looped. In the main composition I applied Time Reamapping to the precomp, duplicated it and spread out the copies, offsetting them in time. I finally added Shadow Studio 3 to give the movements of the hands even more rotational heft.
Enjoy.
And my soul is troubled exceedingly: but thou, O Lord, how long?
(Psalm 6:4 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: