By David ReayTuesday 8 May 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Psalm 77:7-12
7 Has the Lord rejected me forever?
Will he never again be kind to me?
8 Is his unfailing love gone forever?
Have his promises permanently failed?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he slammed the door on his compassion?
10 And I said, “This is my fate;
the Most High has turned his hand against me.”
11 But then I recall all you have done, O Lord;
I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.
12 They are constantly in my thoughts.
I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works. (NLT)
If we are honest, many of us feel like the psalmist in the opening verses of our passage. Where is God? What is he doing? Has he turned against me? Is this faith business a bit of a fraud? One reason the Psalms resonate with us is that they are so realistic. The psalmist is a man of great faith in God but also often in great distress.
One thing we learn from such a passage is that it is normal and natural and right to express our grievances to God. No point in hiding behind pious praise-and-cheery religious optimism. Life can be tough and it might not make much sense at times.
But the other thing we learn is that the psalmist gets himself out of the pit he is in by giving himself a bit of a history lesson. He doesn’t just resort to philosophical reasoning to assert the goodness of God. Nor does he succumb to despair. He instead reminds himself of God’s faithfulness in history. It is as if he recognises that things can’t be all that bad in the present if God has shown himself to be good in the past.
When stricken with doubt and darkness and fear, it is good to do a bit of remembering. We remember what God has done in history recorded in Scripture—which is yet another reason to get to know the Scripture. We also remember what God has done in our own history. He who has brought us this far will not desert us. He who has had hold of us in the past will not let go of us in the present.
Blessings
David Reay