Schizophrenic Praise - Part ONE

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

For the choir director: A psalm of the descendants of Korah. A song to be sung to the tune “The Suffering of Affliction.”  A psalm of Heman the Ezrahite.

O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day.  I come to you at night.  Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry.  For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near.  I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left.  They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave.  I am forgotten, cut off from your care.  You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.  Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude

Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love?  Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction?  Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds?  Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness?  O Lord, I cry out to you.  I will keep on pleading day by day.  O Lord, why do you reject me?  Why do you turn your face from me?  I have been sick and close to death since my youth.  I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors.  Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.  Your terrors have paralyzed me.  They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.  They have engulfed me completely.  You have taken away my companions and loved ones.  Darkness is my closest friend.  

Psalm 88:1-7, 8-10

If contemporary worship gurus wrote hymns these days, this one would never make the list.  this song even has choir notes:  Sing it to the suffering tune.  In today's culture worship requires "happy and up-beat."  Not so in Psalm 88!

Excepting the first 6 words (O Lord, God of my salvation) the Psalm is pure lament (whining, if you will); the flood of an anguished soul.  The Psalmist is laying-out the miserable conditions of his life and, standing in the death of his emptiness, demanding an answer, Can the darkness speak?  Give me a little light on the subject, here, God!  What’s up with this life of mine? 

Ever done that?  Have you ever laid it out there for God to speak out of the darkness of your existence?  If you haven’t, or at least if your personal lament hasn’t been quite as gruesome as Psalm 88, let Scripture remind us today that the worst possible scenario has already been center stage for God’s answers.

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.  Matthew 4:16 ^(KJV)

Matthew ties the life of Jesus to Isaiah’s prophecy that a great light, God’s light on a dark world, would come to cover even the shadow of death.  While we remember that Jesus came to bring light and life, sometimes our personal darkness is so overwhelming.  Can that darkness we face really speak?  Does it say anything worthwhile?  Does it have meaning?

Do you recall the man who asked Jesus to heal his son? ^{Mark 9}  Jesus brought up the issue of faith to a man facing the darkness of losing his child.  The man said, I believe…help me out of my unbelief.  Sometimes the greatest darkness is meant to frame the light we’ve been missing; it comes to display our unbelief and the pathway home to faith.

For You Today  

Father, in this day there may be darkness ahead.  When I’m stumbling around let faith light whichever pathway brings me to you.

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: 

Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?  and  Bi-Polar Prayers 

This is an updated version of “Can the Darkness Speak?” published on Rocky Road Devotions August 13, 2013

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^©   

Remembering

[1]

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Dedicate to me every firstborn among the Israelites. The first offspring to be born, of both humans and animals, belongs to me.”  So Moses said to the people, “This is a day to remember forever—the day you left Egypt, the place of your slavery.  Today the Lord has brought you out by the power of his mighty hand….“On the seventh day you must explain to your children, ‘I am celebrating what the Lord did for me when I left Egypt.’  This annual festival will be a visible sign to you, like a mark branded on your hand or your forehead. Let it remind you always to recite this teaching of the Lord:  ‘With a strong hand, the Lord rescued you from Egypt.’  So observe the decree of this festival at the appointed time each year.  Exodus 13:1-3, 8-10^(NLT)

With each passing year it becomes more difficult to keep the past alive.  Memory is a fading thing.  This is why we RE-member; we put back together that which has been DIS-membered from us (no matter how imperceptibly or how dramatically).  We regather our sense of that moment in time when things changed. 

Some things need to be kept alive.  For a nation at war, there needs to be a recalling of why we do what we do – why we continue to send our sons and daughters into harm’s way.  Because once purpose fails in our memory, once reasoning is put aside in favor of action, that which remains becomes grotesquely horrid, a caricature of what was once a noble quest, and now a thing filled only with the carnage of blood and future victims of PTSD.  War becomes our reason for war.

Like Israel, we are to remember the place of our slavery.  When we remember why we embarked upon a bloody course of fighting, we can re-focus on where the goal is, and when enough will be enough.  We remember to keep our direction sure and our course to our objective of peace straight.

This is what a memorial is supposed to teach, how things went wrong, and how it was put right.  In so doing we teach our young ones who were born into the chaos we now experience – those who have no memory of why the chaos began – that chaos is not our target; our target is an end to chaos.

Another memorial was created to teach how things went wrong.  We call it by many names:  the Supper, Communion, Ordinance, Sacrament, Eucharist and more.  There are not many moving parts…a bit of bread, a sip of wine.  But as the simplicity of the 9/11 memorial begs a storehouse of nightmarish memories 16 years ago, the Lord’s Table envisions the war of the ages begun in Eden.  It is the covering of blood over the sin of our species.  It is the event of the cross where we RE-member; it is where the broken members of our spiritual being are knit back together, so we are once more whole and fitted parts of our Creator’s body.

This then is the target we revere and to which honor affixes expending the price – peace in a world gone mad with the lust of anger, lust and killing.

Truly, let us remember our loss, and justly, let us push for the restoration of what is holy and right.

For You Today

It is well-said that freedom isn’t free; neither is the cost of remembering. 

And the highest cost is certainly that of forgetting!

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

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Side Tracks & Sure Things

[i]

Monday, January 2, 2017

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.  Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. 

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.  He went without knowing where he was going.  And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents.  And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.  Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.        Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-10^(NLT)

As the year changes it’s typically time to think about how things went in the previous twelve months, and then do a little forecasting as to what the next year might bring.  Perhaps there is a new challenge on the horizon, or an old problem that has resurfaced.  Maybe you face a new opportunity that calls for a decision.

That was certainly Abraham’s situation[ii] when God called on him to pick up everything that he called home and family and move out.  It was a tough decision because God hadn’t even named the place, let alone what Abraham would do once he got there.  The poor man didn’t have Google maps or a real estate agent; God just told him to go.

How do you make decisions based on that kind of slim information?  The author of Hebrews didn’t equivocate; it was faith!  You start by faith – you walk by faith – and you finish that way!  

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Romans 1:17^(KJV)

Walking by faith doesn’t mean blindness.  God expects us to investigate where He’s leading by the signs he promises to show us.  The question we all have is:  Just how do I know what is God’s leading, and what isn’t?

Well, that’s also, ultimately, a matter of faith, isn’t it?  But there is a starting point that I’ve discovered over the years that puts some meat on the bones of faith.  That starting point always has prayer as the door.  If you want to walk in faith, there is no more certain beginning than to hit your knees and lay out the uncertainty of your heart to God.  Remember what James said:

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.  James 1:5^(NLT)

Now, that’s the asking part – even a child knows to ask.  What about the knowing; how can you separate God’s answer from everything else?

My answer for that has always been clearer, and proved itself out in the day-to-day of life when I bring my submission to the table.  It’s something like this:

1.     I pray for God to show me His will on doing “A” as opposed to doing “B”

2.     I submit that I don’t know which is best.  “A” has been my longtime pattern; “B” seems to be a wonderful opportunity.

3.     I confess that I want “B” to work out, but my first desire is not to miss God’s desire for my life.

4.     I explore the pros and cons of “A” versus “B”, trusting God will reveal to my heart how His will is leading to His highest blessing for the sake of His kingdom. 

This is the part that’s like Abraham moving out on faith, not having all the facts, figures, spreadsheets and contracts.  If there’s a change God wants me to move-out to claim, praying for His will is one of the ways I’ve seen that keeps me from letting Russell’s carnal nature make decisions that I will regret.  If you’re going to walk in faith with God, you’ve got to begin with faith that submits to God’s will, not your wants. 

For You Today

So, what’s going on in the beginning of this new year in which you hear God calling?  And, by the way, no contracts, no guarantees come with the “God-walk” of faith; remember, it’s the evidence of things NOT seen!

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

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: By SMU Central University Libraries, via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Genesis 12