Baruch 2:11-18: a reflection

11And now, O Lord, you God of Israel who have brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, with signs, with wonders, with great power, and with a high arm, and have gotten yourself a name, as at this day: 12O Lord our God, we have sinned. We have been ungodly. We have done wrong in all your ordinances. 13Let your wrath turn from us, for we are but a few left among the heathen where you have scattered us. 14Hear our prayer, O Lord, and our petition, and deliver us for your own sake. Give us favor in the sight of those who have led us away captive, 15that all the earth may know that you are the Lord our God, because Israel and his posterity is called by your name. 16O Lord, look down from your holy house and consider us. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. 17Open your eyes, and see; for the dead that are in Hades, whose breath is taken from their bodies, will give to the Lord neither glory nor righteousness; 18but the soul who is greatly vexed, who goes stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will declare your glory and righteousness, O Lord.

This is a prayer of confession from exile, owning sin honestly: we have sinned, we have been ungodly; let your wrath turn from us; hear our prayer, and deliver us for your own name's sake. But tucked into the end is a striking thought about who actually glorifies God. The dead, the prayer says, whose breath has left them, give the Lord no glory; but the soul that is deeply troubled, that goes about bowed and feeble, the failing eyes and the hungry soul, this is who will declare your glory.

Notice the reversal. We might assume God is most honored by the strong, the flourishing, the self-sufficient. This prayer says the opposite. It is the humbled soul, the one bent low and empty, who turns to God and gives him glory, because such a soul knows its need and looks to him. The comfortable and full often forget God; the troubled and hungry reach for him, and in reaching, honor him.

That reframes seasons of weakness and need. When you are bowed down, feeble, hungry in soul, you may feel you have nothing to offer God, that your praise is too thin to count. But this prayer says it is exactly the troubled soul that declares his glory, precisely because it turns to him in its emptiness. Your weakness is not a barrier to glorifying God; it may be the very place your praise becomes real. Turn to him from your low place, and give him glory there.

Lord, it is the troubled, bowed-down, hungry soul that declares your glory, not the comfortable and full. When I am bent low and empty, help me turn to you and honor you from that low place, knowing my weakness is not a barrier to glorifying you but the very place my praise becomes real.