Friday, June 24, 2022

Overwhelmed!

 

Friday, June 24, 2022

I cry out to God; yes, I shout.  Oh, that God would listen to me!  When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord.  All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted.  I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help.               Interlude

You don’t let me sleep.  I am too distressed even to pray!  I think of the good old days, long since ended, when my nights were filled with joyful songs.  I search my soul and ponder the difference now.  Has the Lord rejected me forever?  Will he never again be kind to me?  Is his unfailing love gone forever?  Have his promises permanently failed?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he slammed the door on his compassion?            Interlude

And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned his hand against me.”  But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.  They are constantly in my thoughts.  I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.  O God, your ways are holy.  Is there any god as mighty as you?  You are the God of great wonders!  You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations.  By your strong arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.   Psalm 77:1-15

It's a very common experience; all too common!  The pressure builds on the job, or in the family, or with neighbors, death, Covid, bills, age…and on into the abyss.  You’ve been overwhelmed; hope has vanished.  Even just listing these gives me a cold chill.  I’ve been there; chances are you have too, or you even live there.

Whether you’re a believer in God, follower of Jesus, or someone who’s not quite sure if God is even there, you’ve probably prayed during those times.  You ask for a solution, or at least some relief, and the heavens respond back quickly with….NOTHING.  There’s no sound, no skies unfolding with answers, not a twinge of assurance suddenly welling-up in your gut; just the emptiness and certainty that you’re on your own, in your pain, and completely forgotten.

The Psalmist, a court musician in King David’s reign, spent a night in prayer over what was happening in his life, and a kingdom in chaos.  Heaven went dark on him.  You can just picture the building sense of Why Bother?  If you’ve watched that develop in a friend, or family member, you know it’s time to collect all the loose prescription bottles around the house and change the combination on the gun safe.  The scenes start playing over and again in your mind of how you can escape such pain.  If you’ve faced this, and lived-through to a revival of hope, you know it was something greater than what was left inside of you that saved you from yourself.  There was a moment when it all changed, or it gradually dawned in your soul, that a genuinely-hopeful light did exist at the end of the darkness.

For Asaph, it was a long history of staying close to God’s family, prayer, and choosing faith over feelings.  He began to recall (out loud in his written prayer) all the historical facts of God’s goodness.  He started listing them, one-by-one, and with each post of God’s unending faithfulness, the light of dawn crept a little closer.  This practiced litany of Israel’s history with God’s lovingkindness became a sermon Asaph penned for other depressed, hopeless ones in Israel.  By the time this court poet was done, his own darkness was glowing with surprising and fierce joy; the next Psalm ends with God’s solidified tenderness and hope:

He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.  Psalm 78:72

For You Today

Is your hope tank on empty?  Take Asaph’s lesson; joy comes in the mourning!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author) 

For other posts on this topic:  A Prayer From the Hourglass and Has God Forgotten to Be Gracious?

[1] 6 Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©   



 

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