The most sober lesson we can learn from life’s caves is that all we have is a Person, one who never withers or distances himself from us, even though we are weak and languishing.
Depending on who published your Bible, the majority of the Psalter comes with a prefatory note attached, telling you who wrote it and even what might’ve been happening when it was written. Psalm 142 is one such example where that note really matters. The ESV renders it like this: “A Maskil of David, when he was in the cave. A Prayer.” A “maskil” is often understood as “instructions,” that is, something that’s written down for the benefit of others. But what stands out is the fact that these instructions were written in a cave. And not just any cave, but “the” cave.
1. The Cave That Stays With You
Long before Bruce Wayne, David spent a decent amount of time in caves, especially while he was running for his life from the very jealous and very troubled King Saul. David’s unforeseen victory over the Philistine giant, Goliath, led to showers of praise for the shepherd-warrior. “Saul has struck his thousands, and David his ten thousands,” the streets echoed (1 Sam. 18:7–8). And from then on, “Saul eyed David,” with eyes that were desperate to be rid of him (1 Sam. 18:9). Eventually, that jealousy boiled over into a violent rage, with Saul attempting to make David a piece of wall art by pinning him to it with a spear, twice (1 Sam. 18:10–11; 19:8–10). After a narrow escape, the son of Jesse and the divinely anointed successor to Saul spent the next several years of his life on the run, fleeing from home, from the throne he was promised to take, from his companion Jonathan, and from Israel itself.
He fled and fled until he “escaped to the cave of Adullam,” in the Judean wilderness (1 Sam. 22:1), where many believe the words to Psalm 142 were first uttered. There, in that damp, dark, bat-infested cave, the shepherd slated to be king cries out to God, telling him all his troubles and woes and worries (Ps. 142:1–2). It’s significant, though, that David’s recollection refers to “the cave,” which I take to mean that that place was forever ingrained in his memories. As he composed this maskil for his fellow worshippers, he relived those days and nights of grief, heartbreak, and despair.
Maybe you have a memory like that, one that’s so embedded that you don’t have to go looking for it; it comes looking for you. A song, a smell, a word, a reaction — the smallest of things can cause us to relive days we’d rather forget. It doesn’t take me long at all to relive the summer of 2018. Although eight years is a lifetime ago, for me, it’s also like yesterday, since that’s when my mom was diagnosed with acute manic depression, losing all sense of reality, rocking my family to its core. The day I visited her in the mental health facility, that won’t be soon forgotten either, nor will the phone call I had with Natalie soon after, when I told her in the most broken of words, “It’s really bad.”
What I’ve come to understand is that if you’ve been to the cave of despair, or if you’re there now, you’re actually in good company.
There were many long days and nights of crying out to God that followed, as my family and I poured out our complaints to him. But what I’ve come to understand is that if you’ve been to the cave of despair, or if you’re there now, you’re actually in good company. Ours is a God who has a knack for showing up in caves. He isn’t distant, nor is he far from you when you are caught in a cave of anxiety, fear, depression, or regret. Put differently, I believe this moment was ingrained in David’s memory not only due to the awful circumstances that led him there, but also because of who showed up for him when he was at his lowest.
2. The God Who Knows Your Way
When David escaped to that cave, he was seeking a place of refuge from his pursuers. But soon that refuge turned into a prison (Ps. 142:7). That cave became a cell, incarcerating the future king of Israel in a dungeon of despair. He was hemmed in, cramped on every side, with enemies waiting to pounce on him. Even if he were to escape, it wouldn’t matter. There are traps and snares waiting for him just outside the cave’s mouth (Ps. 142:3; cf. 140:5). The man after God’s own heart is at an all-time low. And that’s when he starts to pray: “With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him” (Ps. 142:1–2).
This prayer is pretty much the opposite of those neat and tidy prayers you might hear in Sunday school. It may sound well-manicured, but a closer look reveals otherwise. This is more of a shriek, a desperate call for help in the middle of intense distress. Four times in two verses, David effectively says the same thing, most vividly in verse 2: “I pour out my complaint before him.” Like boiling water out of a scalding pot that falls to the ground, these cries are spilling out of him. He’s giving voice to his deepest and darkest worries, troubles, and anxieties, paying little attention to how he might sound or appear. There’s no posturing in this prayer. Neither is there any attempt to sound poised or put together. Why? Well, because David knows whom he is talking to: “I cry out to the Lord . . . I plead for mercy to the Lord” (Ps. 142:1).
We often mistake prayer for something that it isn’t. What makes prayer “prayer” isn’t the length or the depth of your vocabulary, nor does it have anything to do with eloquence. God’s not up in heaven assigning a grade to your prayer based on the words you employ. No, God just wants to hear you — not the organized or dressed-up “you,” but the real you. As Charles Spurgeon once remarked on this psalm, “We do not show our trouble before the Lord that he may see it, but that we may see him.” [1]
The ears of the Lord are uniquely attuned to your guttural prayers, to all those cries you cry in the dark. And although you might not think your prayer is getting beyond the four walls of your bedroom, God hears, and God knows. He already knows your circumstances, and he’s deeply aware of your trouble, so you don’t have to dance around it or try to clean it up. Instead, you’re free to bring your weak and fainting heart before the one who can weather even our worst complaints.
What David learned in that cave isn’t necessarily what we want to hear — namely, the way out of the cave isn’t a strategy or a technique or a six-step program. The way out is all about knowing the one who knows your way. “When my spirit faints within me,” David admits, “you know my way!” (Ps. 142:3). This is more encompassing than God just knowing or noticing David’s pain. God knowing David’s way means that he’s holding everything; he’s holding it all and in control of it all, from start to finish.
David couldn’t see it. He couldn’t fathom a way out of the cave on his own. But God knew the way. “However a soul is wrapped in gloom,” Alexander Maclaren once wrote, “the thought that God knows the road which is so dark brings a little creeping beam into the blackness.” [2] The Lord who “knows the way of the righteous” (Ps. 1:6) is the same Lord who knows David’s way in the dark, just as he knows your way, too.
3. The Truth That’s Truer
Part of what makes those caves of despair so grievous is how lonely they are. There seems to be no way anyone could know or understand what you’re going through, and that just makes you feel lonelier. David has a similar experience in that cave, as he looked around to see no one there. “Look to the right and see: there is none who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for my soul” (Ps. 142:4). The “right” or right hand is where one would expect to find an advocate or friend (Ps. 16:8; 109:31; 110:5). It’s where your right-hand man should be. But now that spot’s vacant. No one’s there. Nobody is standing with him or coming to his defense. Nobody seems to notice his plight, and no one seems to care either.
This is easily the most gut-wrenching verse in this psalm, and also the most relatable. Israel’s future king is caught in a vicious cycle of loneliness and despair to the point where he can’t make heads or tails of any other reality. But David isn’t wallowing in his feelings as much as he is attempting to make sense of his situation through what I’ve come to call the “logic of despair”:
- “I’m on my own.”
- “There’s no escaping this.”
- “And no one cares.”
- “Because I’m on my own.”
This is what anxiety, depression, fear, and trouble can do to you. Your judgment gets so clouded that what you feel seems to be the only thing that’s true. It’s all you know. It’s all that you can see. Before long, you’re trapped by a string of thoughts and cares that never let up. You want to get out of that vortex of despair, but you just can’t. There’s no escaping it, at least not that you discern. The point here isn’t that anxiety and depression are easily surmountable just by changing your thoughts. You can’t always think your way out of a cave. What’s needed is a word from the outside, one that breaks through the echo chamber of your despair to tell you a truer truth when you can’t see it for yourself.
David’s despairing reality eventually gave way to something infinitely truer: “I cry to you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living’” (Ps. 142:5). This hopeful refrain isn’t merely inspirational. He’s not masking his affliction with words, nor is this a smile being slapped onto a tortured soul. Rather, he’s confessing that the truth he found in the cave is the only thing worth clinging to — namely, where we so often long for an escape from the cave, the Lord shows up to be our refuge in the depths of it.
Ours is a God who meets us in the darkness, who gives himself to us as our portion even there. The “refuge” (mānôs) David lacks isn’t the same as the “refuge” (maḥseh) David ultimately finds. Where he is desperate for an escape hatch to be zapped out of his situation, that’s not what he gets. Instead, God is present for him as a shelter or cover for him in the middle of his situation. This is who God is. He’s our haven amid the storm, our “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). The truth that you’re alone isn’t the truest truth of all, because there’s one who is with you. Sinners and saints are afforded a sanctuary in times of deep despair in the Lord himself.
4. God Never Tunes You Out
There are times in life when it feels like verse 4 is all there is. I’m alone, and no one cares. This is one of the bitter ingredients of depression. It’s easy to stay trapped there, especially when despairing thoughts seem to be all you know. But the fugitive king has found buoyant and abundant hope even in that cave, which fills him with a calm yet timely assurance: “Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low! Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me! Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name! The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me” (Ps. 142:6–7).
Although he doesn’t know how or when, he’s already looking forward to how God is going to deliver him. He longs to be free of that cave, to be in the company of “the righteous” again, giving thanks alongside them to the work of the Deliverer. David is hoping beyond hope that this cave won’t last forever. But a strange thing about this psalm is the fact that it ends with him still there. Even as the last word is sung, it echoes off the walls of that cave. He has yet to run free, to get any relief from his pressing despair, to shake off the doubts and anxieties that put him there in the first place. And yet, there’s something different about David’s perspective.
The ears of the Lord are never plugged. He never tunes us out, nor is he deaf to our brokenhearted pleas.
What eclipses his despair is the one who is listening. What fills him with life, even at his lowest, is how the Lord bends his ear to hear him cry for help (Ps. 142:6). The ears of the Lord are never plugged. He never tunes us out, nor is he deaf to our brokenhearted pleas. There’s nothing you can say, gripe about, or confess that can ever take God by surprise. In fact, he delights when you cast all your burdens on him, notwithstanding what those burdens are (Ps. 55:22). Imbuing us with life in and beyond all those caves of difficulty and despair we encounter is the good news that there is one who cares.
5. The Way Out Is a Person
The apostle Peter picks up on this same refrain in his first epistle. “Casting all your anxieties on him,” he writes of the Lord, “because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7). Of course, God’s care (melō) goes much further than we imagine. This isn’t like getting a “Thinking of You” card, as meaningful as that might be. The good news that David found and that the Bible reveals is that God is concerned with what’s concerns you. Your trouble is his business. He’s attentive in all our adversity, and in all our affliction he is afflicted (Isa. 63:9).
The most sober lesson we can learn from life’s caves is that all we have is a Person, one who never withers or distances himself from us, even though we are weak and languishing. He attends to us right where we are, and brings us to himself. The hope that illumines our caves of despair and disappointment is hope that’s incarnate in the person of Jesus.
Centuries after David’s episode in that cave, a room full of disciples became a veritable cave full of troubles after their Teacher told them he was leaving. That announcement turned an already odd dinner into an ominous affair. Suddenly, the way ahead seemed disorienting, the truth felt garbled, and the life they thought they were going to have seemed to be slipping through their fingers. Those disciples in the upper room with Jesus were every bit as lost as David was. “Lord, how can we know the way?” one of them wondered aloud (John 14:5), which is right when Jesus gives them, and us, the most invigorating promise: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
The answer to our caves of despair is never a “what.” It’s always a who. It’s always Jesus. He’s the one who enters our despair to bear what we cannot bear, who endures what would make us buckle, and who comes out the other side victorious, in the light of his resurrection. Jesus doesn’t just enter your cave; he enters your death, taking upon himself the darkness of the cross, becoming your refuge by becoming your substitute. God in Christ went into the grave to make a way out of it. He’s the Way for you, the Truth for you, and the Life for you. And because he is for you, the cave is never your final destination.
