Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, May 19, 2024
It was a game we made up, which could very accurately be described as a word game. I would bring our big dictionary to my mother and we would take turns closing our eyes, ruffling through its pages, then stop and put a finger down on a random page.
We’d check to see if the word under that finger was a word we already knew, or if it was new to us. (Knew or new – see how much fun words are?!)
If we already knew the word, we’d try again until we landed on an unfamiliar word, which we would read and add to our vocabulary. (Yes, I was a fun child, and yes, I had a patient mother who loved words just as much as I did.)
I paused just now to revisit this game, by myself, and, eyes closed, fingered the word, “floriferous,” which means “bearing flowers, especially blooming freely.” Ahh, a lovely word for springtime use, and new to me.
A few months ago I learned a new word, though not by playing my childhood game. I stumbled upon it in a blog post. My new word is a good word; a wonderful word: “respair,” meaning “the return of hope after a period of despair.” It’s coined from Latin roots meaning “again” and “hope.”
And yet you won’t find it in many dictionaries, including the 2020 Merriam-Webster Dictionary you see in my photo. The Oxford English Dictionary calls it obsolete, citing only one use from 1425.
But guess what brought this word back from such oblivion? The pandemic! A couple of word-lovers discovered and published the word in 2020, and many readers resonated with a word that described a return to hope in a time of such global despair.
And all of this reminds me of David. Several of the songs he wrote began with despair yet ended with respair.
Consider Psalm 13, whose first two verses lament:
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Yet listen to the change of tone in the last two verses:
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me. (verses 5-6)
That’s respair!
And Psalm 59 begins like this, in verses 1-3:
Deliver me from my enemies, O God;
be my fortress against those who are attacking me.
Deliver me from evildoers
and save me from those who are after my blood.
See how they lie in wait for me!
Fierce men conspire against me
for no offense or sin of mine, LORD.
And ends like this, in verses 16-17:
But I will sing of your strength,
in the morning I will sing of your love;
for you are my fortress,
my refuge in times of trouble.
You are my strength, I sing praise to you;
you, God, are my fortress,
my God on whom I can rely.
And perhaps the ultimate despair-to-respair song David penned is Psalm 22. Jesus must have known it by heart, a psalm that predicts His suffering, death, resurrection, and triumph. As He was stretched out, dying on the cross, the first nine words of anguish ripped from His throat:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest. (verses 1-2)
Sometimes I find myself avoiding Psalm 22, because it is such a stark description of Jesus’ suffering. It’s easier to read Psalm 23 with its still waters, green pastures, and “Thou art with me.”
Yet Psalm 22 is powerful in its prophecy, threaded through with promise, and reassuring in its triumphant concluding verses:
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it! (verses 30-31)
Bring back respair! Bring back the word, and especially the return to hope it describes. Jesus told us we would live in a world of trouble, but reminded us that He had overcome the world, so we must take heart.
As we step out into this brand new week, may you take heart, and live each day in respair.
(All verses quoted from the NIV Bible.)