Always There - Psalm 42:9-11 (Wednesday Night Reflection)
Have
you ever had those times when everything was amazing, times where it was sunny,
life was good, blessing upon blessing was readily evident, where there was
never a doubt in your mind that God was smiling down upon you, and then, a storm
cloud appears out of nowhere covering the sky and blotting out the sun and you
wonder just where God went? We wonder
just what has caused God to frown upon us, or worse yet, turn His back on us…
Maybe
it’s not a sudden change in circumstance…maybe it is a longtime struggle. Maybe we are constantly questioning why God
is not answering our prayers. You know,
that same prayer we have lifted up over and over again…possibly for the last
year…the last ten years…the last twenty years…and we are still waiting for God
to act. We are still waiting for God to brighten
the ongoing darkness in our lives that seems like it will never pass. We wonder
where in the world God may be? We wonder
if we are wasting our breath praying?
How
many of us have had those days…those nights…those struggles? If so, we join the Psalmists who cry out
throughout the book, including tonight’s verses:
“I
say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk mournfully because the enemy
oppresses me?’ As with a deadly wound in
my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, ‘Where is
your God?’”
Way
too often we are ashamed to admit that we have or have had those dark nights. We are ashamed that we have ever questioned
the presence of God in our lives. We
think the idea of being anguished in our faith is a sign of weak or absence
faith. We don’t want anyone else to
know…we hide it well. We walk around
with smiling faces, while, internally, our souls are screaming in agony.
Why
be silent? Why be ashamed? Do we really think when we are hiding our
struggles from our brothers and sisters, that we are hiding it from God? We can never hide our true selves from
God. We constantly stand naked before
God…our very being is exposed to God, whether we desire it to be so or
not. Do we really think that Adam or Eve
were successful at hiding their nakedness when they were in the Garden? Do we really think God didn’t know where they
were or what they had done?
Yes,
God asked, “where are you?”[i] Just like Jesus, when confronting the
Disciples, asked, “What were you arguing about?”[ii] Jesus knew.[iii] God knew.
God knows. So why do we try to
hide our struggles of faith? Why do we
try to hide that we are feeling like we are in the midst of a dark night where
there is no light in sight…or the light seems so far off that we will never
find ourselves in it again.
I
will confess. I have been there. I have been in those times where it seemed
like God was completely absent from my life.
It happened before I was in the ministry, and, to be completely honest,
it has happened since I have been in the ministry. Does that shock any of you? Does it trouble any of you? I can tell you that it is not where I am now,
but I have been there…and I may very well be there again someday.
Yet,
as I do, I am comforted by the fact that I am in the company of David and the
other Psalmists who wrote,
“Why
have you forgotten me?”
“How
long, O Lord? Will you forget me
forever? How long will you hide your
face from me? How long must I bear pain
in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”[iv]
We
may even get to the opening words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”
Wow…it
is easy to get to the point where we are downright dark and depressing right in
the middle of our prayer meeting and worship can’t we? Anybody want to stay right here in this
darkness, with the heavy dark rain clouds that seem to have settled over our
island this week?
I
don’t.
You
see, I saved my “God Sighting” from this past week until right now. It happened in two different ways. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of the first,
the one that set this whole reflection in motion. It was last Saturday. We were on the way back from my very first
trip to the Cape. We were trying, it
turns out unsuccessfully, to navigate our way around this massive line of rain
that we could see coming. Suddenly, our
beautiful sunny Saturday was turned into a rain shower on that boat that would have
served as a great skin exfoliate, for any who desire that sort of thing, as the
ice cold raindrops seemed to slice into our face and arms and every exposed
piece of skin. Yet in the midst of this
storm, we happened to look toward the clouds…and looking there we saw something
I, nor our captain, had never seen before.
It was the outline of the sun shining through the clouds.
One
of the things I have always tried to remember and one thing I share with folks
that seem to have darkness settling in about them is to remind us that no
matter how dark the storm clouds, no matter how dark the night, the Son is
always shining.
That
is where the Psalmist ends up as he talks to himself, “Why are you cast down, O
my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again
praise him, my help and my God.” The
Psalmist declares, in the midst of his darkness and despair, that God is our
Hope and that God will be our help and our rock…that God is the one that we can
cling to, even when it seems like everything else is trying to block him out.
When
the Psalmist cried out , “How Long, O Lord?” He concludes, “But I trusted in
your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt
bountifully with me.”
And
the Psalmist when he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me,”
confesses by the end of the Psalm that he realizes that even when God felt
absent, He was still their sustaining Him.
Where did the Psalmist find that presence of God in Psalm 22?
That
is my other God sighting…from Monday night.
When we saw the fullness of the moon and loaded up in the car and drove
down to Shell Point to see it, only to watch the cloud cover come between us
and the moon as we drove. There, it was
almost completely dark, other than the clouds reflecting the moonlight…the more
I looked at it the more it hit me: No, the moon is not the sun…it simply
reflects the sun’s light, but as it reflects the sun’s light, it dispels the
darkness…and the clouds are the darkness trying to cover us, but even they
could not block out the moonlight, they in some ways even reflected and
intensified the light.
In
Psalm 22, the Psalmist realizes that he has experienced the presence of God in
the midst of his struggles right in the midst of the congregation—the gathered
people of God. We are called to be like
the moon, we are called to be a reflection of the Son, into the lives of those
in the darkness…we are to be a reflection of that light that can break through
the clouds. We help dispel the darkness,
not on our own, but as we reflect the light of the Son that has shown into our
lives…and when we shine that light through the clouds that descend on others’
lives, or even our lives, when we reveal our faith in the midst of the clouds,
the light just may be intensified in
such a way it breaks through the darkness even brighter, for we are reminded
that despite the darkness, God is Always There, even to the end of the age![v]
In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment