BACK TO THE BEGINNING
The practice started when I was four years old and my grandmother’s eyesight grew feeble. Every Sunday afternoon she would have me read the Bible to her. Aunt Dru as she was known, had this large- print King James version Reference Bible, and she guided me back and forth through the Readings for that Sunday as outlined in the Anglican Lectionary.
I was always struck by the poetry of the Psalms even though I had no background for interpreting their meanings. Now that I have grown into an old man, I have turned back to a regular reading of the assigned Bible Passages for Sundays but with a mature insight.
The world is well aware of the recent highlights of police brutality towards black men and to a lesser extent black women in the USA, and as often happens, to me certainly, when I open my Bible to study and reflect, I find a passage that is applicable to the concerns of the day.
Recently I stumbled onto Psalm 13. Verse 1 held my attention for a long time. The King James version is so poetic that I wonder why Scholars and others go to the trouble of writing new text for such captivating imagery.
The Psalmist asks “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?”
I believe that most biblical scholars might concede that David was no shrinking violet, and some might even agree that David was a warlike aggressor who was constantly in trouble, stirring up and causing mischief. Yet God did not seem to take too long to respond to David’s pleas for deliverance.
But O my God, man, He is taking forever to respond to the black races’ pleas for help and deliverance from the wickedness of the ungodly.
No people have prayed longer, sung louder and sweeter, attended church with greater regularity, been better upholders of Christian traditions than Blacks, and still we wait.
My hope is slightly buttressed by the 6th verse of Psalm 13 where David says “I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me,” but David was king for only forty years, and his relief came long before the end of his reign.
How long wilt thou forget us, O Lord? Forever? Or are we not reading your directives correctly?
Irvine Weekes.
