There are times when we feel really good about life & times when we don’t - times when we feel strong in faith and times when we don’t. In Psalm 40, the Psalmist writes about the good times, when his faith was strong and he was full of praise & thanksgiving.
I waited patiently for the
Lord; he turned to me & heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to
stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
But then there comes times of trial
& attending doubt. We all have them. He is aware of his sins,
failures & short-comings; of life’s problems and challenges. He needs God.
Where is God, anyway, when you need Him?!
Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love
and faithfulness always protect me. For troubles without number surround me; my
sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my
head, and my heart fails within me. Be pleased to save me, Lord; come quickly,
Lord, to help me.
In her book, ‘Small
Wonder,’ Barbara Kingsolver writes: “The closest my heart has come to breaking lately was on the day my
little girl arrived home from school & ran to me, her face tense with
expectation, asking, “Are they still
having that war in Afghanistan? I suppose
there are a lot of things that may break our heart. . -- the passing of a loved one, the absence of a friend, the
hopes and fears that turn into dashed dreams and the reality finally happening:
something we had greatly feared actually happens As if,”
she continues, “the world were such a place that in one afternoon, while kindergartners were working hard to master the letter I, it would decide to lay down its
arms." Her daughter said: “If people are just going to keep doing that I wish I’d never been born.”
Kingsolver writes that she “sat on the floor and held her tightly to
keep my own spirit from draining through the soles of my feet.”
“It
used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself to be
perfectly happy. I have wondered lately if that feeling will ever come back.
It’s a worthy thing to wonder, but maybe being perfectly happy is not really
the point. Maybe . . . the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel
in our lives, time and again, ‘twixt two extremes of passion: – joy &
grief,’ as Shakespeare put it.”
We try --
God help us, to keep on keeping on, to try to make sense (or keep trusting) when it seems
senseless what’s happening when there’s only misery & mystery beyond
explanation, beyond our human insight; -- & there’s mostly silence when we
try to pray.
The Psalm does not end on a
light, happy note, for God’s People are not immune from
the ups & downs of life, nor from the cold, wet spray of the heaving
breakers & waves on shores of the world around us. Rather, the Psalm ends with the
challenge to keep stumbling heavenward, as God’s faithful ones, despite the polarity of these ongoing
passions: joy and grief in what we experience in life.
And so we try to keep balanced,
or get balanced – somewhere between the extremes,
for we need a faith that sustains –something beyond mere optimism & wishful
thinking; and & the ability
to hang on, God helping us, when
all seems lost – to find - as the hymn puts it, that: ‘when all around our soul gives way, He still is all our hope and stay.’
We will
continue to receive on one hand - gifts of joy, but also, on the other -- injustice
& grief. And so with the Psalmist we pray:
May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long
for your saving help always say, “The Lord is great!”
But as for me, I am poor and
needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my
God, do not delay.
