Psalm 38 — Prayer in Sickness

 When you feel the Lord's displeasure, if you see that you are troubled by this, you can say Psalm 38.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

This is a penitential psalm of David where everything has gone wrong because of his sins, which he freely admits. The result is disease, desertion by family and friends, attacks by enemies, and personal helplessness. Yet, just when the list of disasters hits its height, the psalmist declares confidence in the Lord. 

But it is for you, O Lord, that I wait;

    it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.

Now that's faith! That's hard to do, especially when literally everything is the worst it can be. The psalm is left open-ended as David begs the Lord to act.

Do not forsake me, O Lord
O my God, do not be far from me;
make haste to help me
O Lord, my salvation.

Here's a basic observation about the acid test for knowing how loathsome sin actually is. David feels it and we do too under similar circumstances to those that John Chrysostom describes.

38:5 After the Fact

After the Fact, Saint John Chrysostom. Our bedroom is our heart, for there we toss and turn if we have a bad conscience, but there, if our conscience is easy, we find rest. .. But the person of whom our psalm is speaking retired there to hatch his evil plots, where no one would see him. And because such wickedness was the subject of his meditation, he could find no rest, even in his heart. Homilies on the Gospel of John.

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

There is a bigger point to be gleaned from those final words asking the Lord to act.

If salvation is God's possession, if it is in some sense particularly his, then it is in his control and not simply at the beck and call of humans—no matter how righteous they may be. This awareness of the freedom of God to give or withhold his deliverance is not as clearly expressed in the psalms as in, let's say, Job, Ecclesiastes, or the prayer of the three friends of Daniel (Dan 3:16-18). It is in the final analysis not deliverance but God whom the three friends of Daniel, the psalmists, and Job seek to know and experience. It is this realization that lies behind the psalmist's exclamation at the conclusion of Psalm 38, "O Yahweh, my salvation!" (pers. trans.). Even if the desired deliverance delays or does not come, God is the continuing source of hope and salvation, now and into the future.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

An index of psalm posts is here.