Why? O God, Why?
Opening Prayer
O Lord, my God, I don’t always understand what You do, but I do want to trust Your loving purposes.
Read PSALM 43:1-5
[1] Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. [2] You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? [3] Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. [4] Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. [5] Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION
Reflect
How does the psalmist describe God here?We saw last Sunday that this psalm was originally part of one long prayer together with Psalm 42. The psalmist’s cry to God to rescue and vindicate him (judge in his favor) now comes to the foreground (1). Implied in his cry, I believe, are the searing questions: Why? Why me? What have I done to deserve this? (2). This is an all too common, human cry most vividly seen in the questioning that Job directs to God (Job 7:17-21). But just as God did not condemn Job for questioning, neither does the psalmist expect anything less than the vindication for which he pleads and for which he expects to give God due praise (4). The psalmist calls on God’s “light and truth” to search him out, find and ultimately rescue him (“let them guide me”) (3). Then he will once again come “home” to God, to God’s holy Temple, where he will joyfully offer God praise for answering his desperate prayer (4). Remembering God’s goodness and faithfulness in the past (42:4), he, and we, can lift our downcast souls and find sure hope for the future. For God is, indeed, faithful and we will yet praise him again (5).
Apply
What past goodness of God can give you hope in hard times? Bring your hard questions to God now.
Closing prayer
Good Lord, help me to bring my honest questions to You and to trust in Your good, unfailing love for me.
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