Psalms 80:1-19: a reflection

1Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who sit above the cherubim, shine out. 2Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up your might! Come to save us! 3Turn us again, God. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. 4LORD God of Armies, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people? 5You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in large measure. 6You make us a source of contention to our neighbors. Our enemies laugh among themselves. 7Turn us again, God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. 8You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations, and planted it. 9You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root, and filled the land. 10The mountains were covered with its shadow. Its boughs were like God’s cedars. 11It sent out its branches to the sea, its shoots to the River. 12Why have you broken down its walls, so that all those who pass by the way pluck it? 13The boar out of the wood ravages it. The wild animals of the field feed on it. 14Turn again, we beg you, God of Armies. Look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vine, 15the stock which your right hand planted, the branch that you made strong for yourself. 16It’s burned with fire. It’s cut down. They perish at your rebuke. 17Let your hand be on the man of your right hand, on the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. 18So we will not turn away from you. Revive us, and we will call on your name. 19Turn us again, LORD God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

Psalm 80 is the prayer of a people in decline, and one plea runs through it three times like a refrain: Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved. The psalmist looks at a nation battered and broken, a vine once planted and flourishing, now with its walls broken down and ravaged, and he does not primarily resolve to try harder. He cries out for God to restore, recognizing that restoration is God's work, not theirs.

Notice the shape of the prayer. Restore us, O God. Not, we will restore ourselves, or, we will turn things around, but a humble plea for God to do the restoring, to make his face shine on them again, to turn back to them so that they might be saved. The psalmist knows that a people in decline cannot simply pull themselves up; they need God to visit them, to turn to them, to restore. And so he asks, again and again.

That refrain is a prayer worth learning for our own seasons of decline, whether personal or shared, when things have run down, walls have broken, and our own efforts feel unequal to the restoring. The psalm teaches us to cry out: Restore us, O God; let your face shine. It puts the weight where it belongs, on God's initiative and mercy, not on our striving. When you find yourself in a season of decline, longing for renewal, make this your prayer. Ask God to restore you, to turn his face toward you again. Restoration is his to give.

Lord, the psalmist cried again and again, Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved. In my own seasons of decline, when things have run down and my own efforts feel unequal to the restoring, teach me to pray his prayer. Turn your face toward me again, and do the restoring I cannot do for myself. Restore us, O God, and we will be saved.