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 attention – THIS 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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[1] See Romans 8:35-39

Of Promises and Panic

Friday, September 2, 2022

“If you listen to these regulations and faithfully obey them, the Lord your God will keep his covenant of unfailing love with you, as he promised with an oath to your ancestors.  He will love you and bless you, and he will give you many children.  He will give fertility to your land and your animals.  When you arrive in the land he swore to give your ancestors, you will have large harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil, and great herds of cattle, sheep, and goats.  You will be blessed above all the nations of the earth.  None of your men or women will be childless, and all your livestock will bear young.  And the Lord will protect you from all sickness.  He will not let you suffer from the terrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all your enemies!  “You must destroy all the nations the Lord your God hands over to you.  Show them no mercy, and do not worship their gods, or they will trap you.  Perhaps you will think to yourselves, ‘How can we ever conquer these nations that are so much more powerful than we are?’  But don’t be afraid of them!  Just remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt.  Remember the great terrors the Lord your God sent against them.  You saw it all with your own eyes!  And remember the miraculous signs and wonders, and the strong hand and powerful arm with which he brought you out of Egypt.  The Lord your God will use this same power against all the people you fear.  And then the Lord your God will send terror to drive out the few survivors still hiding from you!  “No, do not be afraid of those nations, for the Lord your God is among you, and he is a great and awesome God.  Deuteronomy 7:12-21

I’ve often thought of what it must have been like for God’s people, on the verge of entering the Promised Land, and hearing Moses rehearse the promises God had made to protect and prosper them.  And here they were, a nation of former slaves, wanderers in the wilderness, and they were to conquer this unknown territory.  I’m thinking it would be strange if they didn’t have a little panic fluttering around in their bellies, perhaps the understatement of the century!

Doing a quick look-back over the past forty-two years, when we sold the family house and loaded up our kids and a U-Haul to go half way across the country to seminary, I know there were times when I felt that flutter in my own belly.  Of course it was also an adventure, but the panic possibilities were a sobering force.  On this side of four decades later I can say, without hesitating, the panic worry was a matter of not trusting God’s promises, yet fully understanding that was dumb.  If God could sustain and feed a million Israelites in a wasteland, wandering for forty years, without their shoes and clothes wearing out, he could certainly take care of the Brownworth tribe.  Along the way there were some shortages of what we thought we needed…but never did we suffer the loss of what He promised…His presence.  We experienced unexpected provision when the pantry was empty, finances when the wolves howled, and more than a few healings of our physical and emotional need.  Our kids were loved by some pretty awesome church grandmas and grandpas, and somehow our old cars managed to keep rolling along.  We have been truly blessed, sometimes in spite of our tiny faith.

For You Today

It seems the difference between tiny faith and big faith is the willingness to let go; we need to be able to let go of what we think we need, or what we want because it’s better, and let God decide.  When you’ve done that, you’ve done your part of conquering the only territory for which you’re responsible, your own heart.

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: 

Big Faith and Jailbreak!

[1] Images:   Title Image today is a portrait in oils of our Wellie, by Jennifer Brownworth Klim                                                              Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©