How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. [Psalm 13:1-4 (NIV)]
When I first started reading the psalms, I suspected David might have been bi-polar—his highs seemed so high and his lows so very low; now I understand that he was just being truthful. In his psalms, David unabashedly expressed his deepest feelings to God. Pouring out his soul, he openly shared his emotions—whether anger, disappointment, sorrow, regret, shame, joy, love, fear, doubt, or even his desire for vengeance upon his enemies. No matter how troubled he was, David never was afraid to speak from his heart. I’m not sure we are willing to be as vulnerable and straightforward in our prayers as was David.
Thinking God had forgotten him (or was deliberately ignoring him), David dared to complain of the Lord’s unkindness in Psalm 13. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis expressed a similar feeling of being ignored by the Lord. After noting how present God seemed in the good times, Lewis asked “where is God?… Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” He asked, “Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”
Indeed, it is easy to see God in times of safety, prosperity, and health. We perceive in Him a hillside of flowers but not when a wildfire destroys an entire town. We see His work in the birth of a child but not in a child’s death at the hands of a school shooter. We feel His presence when a loved one defeats cancer but He seems absent when we suffer from chronic pain. C.S. Lewis warned that the danger we face in those dark times is not so much that we’ll stop believing in God but that we’ll come to believe that God is not good! We’re tempted to give up on Him because it seems He’s given up on us!
In this fallen world, there will be times when, like C.S. Lewis and David, it seems that God has turned his back to us. We feel forsaken and disregarded. Having recently gone through a dark time when it felt like God’s office door was closed to me, I found myself praying the words of Psalm 13. Fortunately, I didn’t stop at the first four verses. After expressing his feeling of being abandoned, David turned to praise and proclaimed his confidence in God’s love, faithfulness, and deliverance.
Like David, I will trust in the Lord’s goodness in all things—even those things I don’t understand. Rather than believing in the goodness of life, I will choose to believe in the goodness of God.
It was a web day at the park and I don’t mean the world-wide kind. It was one of those days when the morning dew, mist, and light cooperated in such a way that we saw beautiful intricate spider webs hanging everywhere. Looking as if they were made of strands of silver rather than proteinaceous silk extruded from a spider’s spinnerets, it seemed like the spiders had decorated all the trees in celebration of Christmas.
“And be sure of this,” He promised, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20 (NLT)]
God took Heaven’s best—the Lord Jesus Christ—to redeem earth’s worst! [Billy Graham]
Just finishing its 5th season, the Food Network’s “Outrageous Pumpkins” features remarkable pumpkin artistry. This year’s competition matched up 14 of the nation’s best carvers into teams and challenged them to create over-the-top pumpkin creations. The pumpkin artists created horrific nightmares, constructed grisly crime scenes, and fashioned monstrous mechanical battling beasts. Using everything from melon ballers to huge saws, they they sculpted extraordinary and intricate ghouls, witches, wizards, goblins, werewolves, and monsters. As someone who is severely pumpkin-challenged (and eventually purchased a permanent Jack O-Lantern complete with an electric light), I’m amazed by the skill of these artists.
Many years ago, my two boys were playing at their grandparents’ house. While Grandpa worked in the garden, the brothers climbed up into the apple tree and started to throw apples at him. A patient man, their grandfather told them to stop and, when more apples came whizzing at him, he offered a sterner warning. After briefly stopping their barrage, the rascals were unable to resist the temptation and chucked more apples at Grandpa. To their surprise, this gentle and loving man turned around, picked up some apples, and returned fire. Having played ball as a boy, Gramps had a strong throwing arm and excellent aim. He didn’t pull any punches as he pitched those apples back at his grandsons. The boys, unable to maneuver easily in the tree, quickly learned the meaning of “as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel.” When they called, “Stop, Grandpa, it hurts!” he replied, “Yes, I know it does, but you needed to learn that!” It wasn’t until those hard apples hit their bodies that the youngsters understood how much their disobedience hurt their grandfather (both physically and emotionally).
Devotions of the Heart 