Monday, December 12, 2022

Echoes of the Abandoned

Dear friends.  In case you've been wondering, last week was a vacation.  Not really...cannot say that about COVID.  It was time away from doing what I love, studying, praying, preaching, and in some/many ways sharing God's love.  Thank you for your patience and prayer.  
We now resume our regularly scheduled Rocky Road interference with the complacent life. 

Monday, December 12, 2022

Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad?  I will put my hope in God!  I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!  Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you—even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar.  I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.  But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life.  “O God my rock,” I cry, “Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?”  Their taunts break my bones.  They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”  Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad?  I will put my hope in God!  I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!  Psalm 42:5-11

Six times in seven verses the Psalmist uses that piercing interrogative:  WHY? There aren’t many humans who don’t go there; many live there.  We want to know why we must suffer; the question suggests a tone of intimating God may be at fault for this injustice…Me?  ME? of all people, ME?  It’s like a raging child flinging an I HATE YOU to the parent because he’s been sent to his room.  It’s odd, isn’t it, being banished to a cheerfully-decorated suite with tech-toys, computer, personal phone, and cable-loaded Smart-TV, and imagining you’re a victim of a Siberian death sentence. 

The redeeming turn of the writer’s tone is found in both the first and last verses.  Twice in this Psalm we hear:  I will put my hope in God.  In all Biblical-era literature, and many modern genres, repetition means it’s important; it means pay attentionTHIS is BIG STUFF!

To put hope in something, or someone, is to trust.  Hoping in God is the opposite of blaming God.  It is placing your full trust in His wisdom.  It is not a careless abandonment of your free will – rather, it is a considered choice to lay down the defensive victim-claiming, in favor of picking up holy hands to praise the One who created you…never doubting, even when fearing, that you acknowledge He alone is the answer, because He alone, is truly your redemption.

There are two ways (at least) to read this Psalm. 

·       The first is the blame game, with that tone that says: 

“God, what are you thinking with all this YOU are letting happen to me?” 

·       The second way is with the explanatory interrogative

“Father God, some people are asking why I suffer, and I want them all to know, I’m placing every egg I’ve got, my whole future, in Your basket, God, no matter what may come.”

For You Today  

It’s easy to go for the woe, despair, and agony on me choice #1 of blaming God.  Being a victim is so easy and acceptable in today’s culture.  Make your pain sound grotesque enough, and you’ll get a settlement in somebody’s court. 

For a believer, that’s nonsense.  We are not victims, no matter what the world may label us, do to us, or what any of the world’s big shots say about us.  We are, as Paul declared more than conquerors, held securely in the love and favor of the Father’s hands.[1]  We are never abandoned!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       Afraid to Die   and   An Okra Kind of Christmas

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  

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