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Be a goldfish. How? Can you show me? Or tell me? Good job!
In the AppleTV series Ted Lasso, in the second episode of season one, Ted Lasso, the coach of a British football team called the Richmond Greyhounds, tell one of his players, Sam, to be a goldfish. Sam has just made a blunder on the field during practice that allowed the opposing players to score a goal. He’s quite mad at himself. To make matters worse, one of the opposing players teases him for messing up. So Coach Lasso calls Sam over and asks him, “Do you know what the happiest animal on earth is? A goldfish. They only have a ten-second memory. So be a goldfish.”[2]
If that sounds a little fishy, it turns out that’s not true about goldfish. There have been schools of studies that show that they actually have pretty good memories. For example, if you feed a goldfish at the same spot in the tank every day, they will hang out near that spot at feeding time, even before you feed them.[3]
“Be a goldfish” is the Ted Lasso way of saying, “Shake it off,” or “Fohget about ittttt” [New Jersey accent]. Don’t dwell on your mistakes.
It’s actually similar to several Bible verses. In Isaiah 43, Isaiah reminds us that God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, and then in 43:18-19 says:
18 “But forget all that—
it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
19 For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
God doesn’t want us to dwell on our mistakes either. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, recounts all that has happened to him so far, but also acknowledges that he has far to go to reach the perfection of Jesus Christ.
13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
Forgetting the past is not always easy, especially if we’re hanging on to guilt and regret. But when we turn to God and confess our mistakes and our regrets and ask for forgiveness, God forgets them and sees us as renewed people.
“I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” (Jeremiah 31:34, NLT)
God sees us through the love of Jesus Christ, and it is us who sometimes forget that God’s love stays with us.
Trusting in God doesn’t mean the end of struggling, and this juxtaposition of sorrow and hope is what we see in Psalm 13, the shortest of the psalms of lament. Psalm 13 shows us how to be a goldfish – to keep turning to God and keep finding God’s love and joy, even in the midst of trouble and sorrow.
The psalmist begins with a plaintive cry. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
We don’t know what the psalm writer’s situation is, but he tells us that he is in pain, spiritual and emotional pain.
How long must I bear pain in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
Some think that David wrote this during the time that he was hiding from King Saul. David had been anointed by the prophet Samuel to be the next king of Israel, and hired to serve in Saul’s court as a musician until it was time for David to become king. But Saul was jealous of David’s abilities and determined to kill him. So David was a man on the run, possibly feeling like God had forsaken him, maybe even deceived him with the promise of becoming king.
Maybe the psalmist is grieving. There’s some denial in those opening verses. How can this be? And then some bargaining. Help or I will die! Though the psalm says it a bit more eloquently:
“Give light to my eyes or I will sleep the sleep of death.” (3)
But then in the last two verses the psalmist finds some hope. I have trusted God before and I will trust God again, and I will sing to the Lord because he has been generous with me.
It’s a rather sudden change of perspective, from despair to rejoicing…though I would point out that it’s more a statement of hope for things to change in the future than it is a statement of things having changed in the present.
I trusted (past tense)…so I shall rejoice (future tense)…I will sing (future)…because God has dealt (past).
The psalmist is remembering the goodness of God and trusting that he will see that goodness again in the future, even if he’s not seeing it in the present moment.
For Chad Martin, the executive director of a homeless housing agency in Lancaster, PA, the psalmist’s lament, “How long, O Lord?” is on the lips of people living on the streets. Whether or not they feel forgotten by God, they are often forgotten by those of us who haven’t experienced their situation, or simply not noticed at all.
Martin tells about the process of searching out the homeless each January to count them, to assess the present scope of the problem. It’s called a “point in time” or PIT count. In Lancaster County, PA, the recent counts found 450 experiencing homelessness. When I lived in Galveston, the city worked with clergy and other help agencies, setting the date that everyone would do as a New York Times article describes:
They go into the streets in search of data. Peeking behind dumpsters, shining flashlights under bridges, rustling a frosted tent to see if anyone was inside. This is what it takes to count the people in America who don’t have a place to live. To get a number, however flawed, that describes the scope of a deeply entrenched problem and the country’s progress toward fixing it.[5]
The Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition does this count too. The numbers are used to get funding for HUD programs, and to find and talk to the homeless community to learn what they need and how we can better assist them.[6]
The statewide report for Kansas for 2022 showed that Rice County had zero homeless people. But I wonder if that is really true? I did some asking around yesterday, and it would seem that Rice County doesn’t do a PIT count. Maybe I didn’t ask the right person, or maybe we just assume there aren’t any homeless here. But is that really true? To be homeless means “An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” They might be sleeping in a car, an empty building, or a park.[7]
Sometimes we don’t see because we aren’t looking. There’s a woman in Greenville, South Carolina who takes people on tours of the city to open their eyes to the people living in the margins. At a couple of the tour stops, she points out the trails leading into the woods that I’d never noticed that lead to places where the homeless often camp. I wonder if we kept our eyes open whether we would find that there are homeless people here?
Who else have we not noticed, even in our own community, who might be, in their moments alone, calling out to God like the psalmist? “How long, O Lord?”
Psalm 13 in its brevity is both despair and hope.
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. (5)
Luther called the stance of this prayer the “state in which Hope despairs, and yet Despair hopes at the same time; and all that lives is ‘the groaning that cannot be uttered’ wherewith the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, brooding over the waters shrouded in darkness…. This no one understands who has not tasted it.”[8]
Old Testament scholar James Mays says that this “psalm leads those who read and pray it from protest and petition to praise; it holds all three together as if to teach that they cohere in the unity of prayer. There is a coherence that holds the apparently separate moments together. God is so much a God of blessing and salvation that one must speak of tribulation and terror as the absence of God. Yet God is so much the God of hesed (steadfast love) that one must speak to God in the midst of tribulation and terror as the God of “my salvation.”[9]
It’s the essence of what Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
It is this reality that we hear in a poem that Rob Krabbe wrote, inspired by Psalm 13.
Deep in My Bones
[Impressions from Psalm 13]
a poem by Rob Krabbe
Deep in my bones,
again, and again.
Like the Jews in the desert,
I get it, I understand.
You hold us by the hand.
Treasures buried in the sand;
as we watch in wonder.
Your power, hour by hour
minute by minute.
Suddenly thunder! Lightning,
from the clouds to the ground.
I have seen you,
why do I still seek
what I have already found?
I sit here looking for blessings
in life, yet it’s my daily need to atone,
for I know you deep in my bones.
In the reflection of my heart,
darkness comes and goes;
I can feel it from my fingers to my toes.
I can hear it, smell it, taste it,
see it in the fading silence.
Waste it, and partner with it
in my own understanding.
Help me burn down that reliance!
Your heart, your love, your generosity are
longstanding, and undemanding.
One day my head says aloud,
“…you seem like a genie, a magician,
the grand cosmic muffin! Ephemeral,
seemingly, like a distant royalty;
a professional in demanding pedigree!”
Hyperbole, but what kind of god’s son
or daughter am I, then?
No matter what, I am not God;
That much I know.
I knew that before I was born.
I’ll master it before I go.
Do not save me from a fool’s journey
if it is too much to ask, but please,
save me from being a fool.
I will lay back and Zen,
Pink Floyd in my den,
Close my eyes, and meditate,
remembering my “way-back” home.
Lectio Divina, tai chi, I try and try.
To see your face, see your eyes;
I have this fragile need to ask you why.
I don’t want to live this life forever,
I just don’t want to die.
I know you.
I know your artistry,
those wonderful dulcet tones,
music; which keeps me alive.
I know you in my life.
I know you in my soul.
I know you in my heart and mind,
and, I know you… deep in my bones.[11]
Thanks, God.
Cover photo by Kyaw Tun on Unsplash
[1] photo by Cici Hung on Unsplash
[2] Watch the scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PmX7zEUg_w
[3] https://www.livescience.com/goldfish-memory.html
[4] Photo by nika tchokhonelidze on Unsplash
[5] February 3, 2023 NYT article quoted by Chad Martin in the July 2023 edition of The Christian Century. Accessed at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/lectionary/july-2-ordinary-13a-nbsp-psalm-13?utm_source=Christian+Century+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8c393a9cd0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_EdPicks_2023-06-27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b00cd618da-8c393a9cd0-86187587
[6] https://gkcceh.org/pit_2023/
[7] https://kdads.ks.gov/docs/librariesprovider17/csp/bhs-documents/reports/hud-definition-of-homelessness.pdf?sfvrsn=cf2d06ee_2#:~:text=individual%20or%20family%20afraid%20to,to%20obtain%20other%20permanent%20housing.
[8] Mays, James L.. Psalms (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (p. 80). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition. ” (quoted by Perowne, 1:156).
[9] Mays, James L.. Psalms (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (pp. 79-80). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[10] Photo by Jeremy Bishop: https://www.pexels.com/photo/underwater-photography-of-ocean-2397651/
[11] CR 02.10.2021 Rob Krabbe and NoonAtNight Publications
United Presbyterian Church 