438_A prayer drenched in tears Psalm 6 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. 2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. 3 My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long? 4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. 5 For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? 6 I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. 7 My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes. 8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. 9 The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment. In the biography of Leonard RavenhillI, Light of Eternity, it is recounted how he used to pass by the Salvation Army building in a poor cotton town in England. This was one of the largest of its kind outside London. At the front stood two large stones. One bore the inscription: “William Booth of the Salvation Army opened this corps, 1910.” The other stone read: “Kate and Mary Jackson, officers in this corps.” Kate and Mary Jackson were two young women sent to serve in that poverty-stricken place. They worked with all their strength. They did everything they had been trained to do. They organized meetings, taught, evangelized, and served the poor. But nothing changed. They could see no fruit. After a couple of years of exhausting effort, they were discouraged and desperate. They wrote to General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, asking to be transferred to another place. Back came a telegram: “Try tears.” Kate and Mary didn’t just pray—they travailed. They wept. They poured out their souls in anguish and desperation. And the broken town stirred at last, not because of new strategies or better sermons, but because God answered the prayer of the broken heart. This is the essence of Psalm 6. It is not a neat, composed prayer. It is not polished or formal. It is drenched in tears. Psalm 6 is the first of what we call the penitential psalms, that includes also Psalms 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. It opens with a trembling cry: “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” Here is David, the man after God’s own heart, burdened with guilt, fear, and anguish. Both his body and his soul are in torment. “Be gracious to me, O Lord,” he pleads, “for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.” And then he adds: “My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long?” In that place where the pain runs so deep it feels like your very