majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him in Psalms 88:13-14,
"I cry to you for help, O Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before
you. Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?"
This psalm by Heman is a litany of complaint. In it he speaks of his
soul being full of trouble, verse 3, that his life draws near the
grave. He is like a man without strength, set apart with the dead,
forgotten by the Lord, cut off from his care, verses 4-5. And so the
complaint goes.
I suspect if we were honest, most of us would admit to those times
when, even as children of God, we have felt distant and estranged from
the Lord, abandoned by him. As Heman expresses, "Why, O Lord do you
reject me and hide your face from me?" I see something of this in
Paul's second letter to the church in Corinth. There he says, "We do
not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we
suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far
beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.
Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death." 2 Corinthians
1:8-9. I wonder if, in Paul's circumstance there, he may have called
out to the Lord in a similar way as Psalm 88.
There is more to the story that Paul provides us. We find that the
Lord had purpose for the hardships that Paul and his company
experienced. He says, "this happened that we might not rely on
ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." 2 Corinthians 1:9. What we
learn is that life as a believer has both those times of intimacy with
the Lord and times of difficulty. All of these experiences we face
because our loving Lord has his own agenda he is carrying out in our
lives. As it turns out, when Paul was in despair he was not abandoned
by God at all, but was in fact going through an important lesson God
had for him. This is what I see in God this morning: our God is
faithful to us even in the times we feel distant and estranged from
him. When we seem to be facing threats all on our own, when we might
feel abandoned by him, our loving heavenly Father is actually right
there with us, carrying out his agenda in and through us.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd
love to hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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