Psalm 44

¹We have heard with our ears, O God,
Our fathers have told us,
The deeds You did in their days,
In days of old:
² You drove out the nations with Your hand,
But them You planted;
You afflicted the peoples, and cast them out.
³ For they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword,
Nor did their own arm save them;
But it was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your countenance,
Because You favored them.

⁴ You are my King, O God;
Command victories for Jacob.
⁵ Through You we will push down our enemies;
Through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us.
⁶ For I will not trust in my bow,
Nor shall my sword save me.
⁷ But You have saved us from our enemies,
And have put to shame those who hated us.
⁸ In God we boast all day long,
And praise Your name forever. Selah

⁹ But You have cast us off and put us to shame,
And You do not go out with our armies.
¹⁰ You make us turn back from the enemy,
And those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves.
¹¹ You have given us up like sheep intended for food,
And have scattered us among the nations.
¹² You sell Your people for next to nothing,
And are not enriched by selling them.

¹³ You make us a reproach to our neighbors,
A scorn and a derision to those all around us.
¹⁴ You make us a byword among the nations,
A shaking of the head among the peoples.
¹⁵ My dishonor is continually before me,
And the shame of my face has covered me,
¹⁶ Because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles,
Because of the enemy and the avenger.

¹⁷ All this has come upon us;
But we have not forgotten You,
Nor have we dealt falsely with Your covenant.
¹⁸ Our heart has not turned back,
Nor have our steps departed from Your way;
¹⁹ But You have severely broken us in the place of jackals,
And covered us with the shadow of death.

²⁰ If we had forgotten the name of our God,
Or stretched out our hands to a foreign god,
²¹ Would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
²² Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

²³ Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?
Arise! Do not cast us off forever.
²⁴ Why do You hide Your face,
And forget our affliction and our oppression?
²⁵ For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
Our body clings to the ground.
²⁶ Arise for our help,
And redeem us for Your mercies’ sake.

Our fathers have told us, the deeds You did in their days, in days of old

Do you ever read about something in the Bible and wonder, “Why doesn’t God act so obviously now?” I do. I mean, come on, burning bushes, angels flying around everywhere, the Red Sea parting, the water coming out of rocks, kids hitting giants with rocks. If God did stuff like that now, everyone would have to believe, right?

But You have cast us off and put us to shame, and You do not go out with our armies.

Someone once said that God didn’t do anything then that He doesn’t do now. Maybe I’m meant to take those stories with a grain of salt and be content that their meaning outweighs historical “fact,” or perhaps just say that there were natural phenomena happening and God was putting people in the right place at the right (or sometimes wrong) time. Or, maybe I’m just not looking around today with the right attitude, and maybe God is still producing the exact same types of miracles without me bothering to look.

Why do You hide Your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?

Last weekend, I joined my church’s attempt at a carnival to help out a local health clinic. If you’ve paid any attention to the Midwest, you’d know that it has rained about once all summer. So, God in His infinite wisdom for some reason or another called us to hold our carnival on the one day when he also decided that Kansas needed a good, long, soaking rain. We set up all of our games and spent a few hours, getting soaked. Only about 10 kids came, most of them somehow related to our volunteers. After an hour of less-than-stellar gaming, we decided to pack up early. Our pastor called us all over after we had packed up everything and told us, “When God calls me to do something, I don’t come up with a plan B. Sometimes he calls us to do something unsuccessfully. Who knows what God’s plan was here today, but just because our carnival wasn’t a success doesn’t mean that our mission wasn’t.”

It’s easy to forget that God has His own plans that aren’t necessarily the same as ours. It’s even harder to remember that sometimes God doesn’t call us to be victorious all the time. Sure, it would be great if God just came out with a giant sign for the whole world to see. But, He made the rules of the Universe and He tends to play by them, which should show us that He is a fair God. C.S. Lewis said it brilliantly, though: “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”

Psalm 43

Vindicate me, O God,
And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!
² For You are the God of my strength;
Why do You cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

³ Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.
⁴ Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.

⁵ Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God

Oh, send out Your light and Your truth! Let them lead me

This is a short psalm, and I don't have all that much to say about it. It's got a very similar sentiment to Psalm 42. The psalmist feels a longing for God in his soul and can't seem to find Him. Then, in the middle of the psalm, he cries out for God to send out His light and truth because he wants to follow it. Sometimes I think we can be a little bit oblivious to God's subtle hints around us, especially when we're sitting around and can't feel God's presence with us. When we're done with our moping and decide that we need to go ask God to help us with everything again, we can't get by with something that may just be a coincidence. We're looking for God to pull out the big guns. "Hey God, show me exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm supposed to be going, to get back on the right track." We're like Gideon with his fleece (and most of us probably end up asking for that second sign too, you know, just in case we just happen to be in possession of a magic shamwow fleece).

But, God's okay with that. He was okay with it when Gideon did it, and he's okay with it when I do it too. He knows our nature and knows we like signs. Sometimes we don't get ones quite as obvious as a neon sign, but other times they stand out pretty brightly. As I'm sure I've said dozens of times, I don't know why I applied to the University of Kansas. I didn't want to leave the east coast. I didn't want to be in a masters program instead of a PhD one. I'm not even really sure why I applied. When I got my letters back, I had the choice of KU or Villanova. KU offered money, Villanova didn't. It was like there was a target pointing at Kansas. So, I went. I wasn't happy about it at first, I'll admit, but now I know that this is where I was meant to be. In the end, we need to be prepared to do what God wants us to do. When we ask Him to show His light and Truth, we need to be prepared to follow it wherever it goes, or else we risk continuing to suffer in our souls because we are still far from Him. And, when we get to where He wants us to be, we can "go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy."

Psalm 42

¹As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
³ My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say to me,
“Where is your God?”

⁴ When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go with the multitude;
I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.

⁵ Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.

⁶ O my God, my soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,
And from the heights of Hermon,
From the Hill Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
⁸ The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime,
And in the night His song shall be with me—
A prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I will say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
¹⁰ As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

¹¹ Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God… My tears have been my food day and night

I am a crier. I cry at everything. I cry when I’m tired, when I’m frustrated, when I’m happy, sometimes even when I watch sappy Hallmark Christmas movies. I have been to that point of upset that all I do is cry, and as soon as I get calmed down a little, the tears just start dripping again. Everything is just heaped on top of everything else so that I don’t even know what I’m really upset about anymore. First it’s the initial problem, then it’s that I got upset with it, then I’m frustrated that it exists, then I get more angry because I wasted the day on this one issue, then I’m tired of thinking about it, then I’m get upset over some tangential problem.

For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God

I can’t say exclusively, but most of my moments of self-doubt come during times when I’m not walking as closely as I should with God. Now, I don’t believe that God loves anyone more or less for going or not going to church. The church is just a building, and we are told, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matt. 18:20, NIV). However, in the pre-Jesus days of the Psalms, they basically believed that God lived at the temple. If someone didn’t go to the temple, he wasn’t spending face-time with God.

O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember You

So, when we come to those moments of despair, we have to realize that it’s not God who is absent from us, but we who are absent from God. The poet keeps asking, even after this moment where God has gone. He probably had never heard that “Footprints in the Sand” thing. Heck, I’m a huge fan of that poem, and I still tend to forget it in the times when I need it the most. The point is, God can seem absent in our lives sometimes. I can’t begin to guess at His design. Does He want to test our mettle? Maybe it’s just that we’re too stubborn to see Him? Maybe we’ve pushed Him away from ourselves? Is He just waiting for us to ask? Maybe it’s some combination of those things—or none of them. The important thing to remember is that God never abandons us permanently.

The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me

It’s a beautiful contrast to the beginning of the poem when we were feeding on tears night and day. Lovingkindness is a “tenderness and consideration toward others.” During the day, we’re usually around all sorts of people, getting stressed out with work, school, kids, whatever. What we need during the day is for someone to be pouring lovingkindness on us so that we can manage and maybe be an inspiration to others. On the other hand, night is usually a calmer time of day. It’s a great time for singing. Singing while I cook or do the dishes or take a shower or look up Greek vocabulary.

But, I suppose it’s not important which time either happens. The important point is that God can replace our sorrow that we feel when our souls are longing for Him with His blessings.

Psalm 41

¹Blessed is he who considers the poor;
The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
² The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive,
And he will be blessed on the earth;
You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies.
³ The Lord will strengthen him on his bed of illness;
You will sustain him on his sickbed.

⁴ I said, “Lord, be merciful to me;
Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.”
⁵ My enemies speak evil of me:
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
⁶ And if he comes to see me, he speaks lies;
His heart gathers iniquity to itself;
When he goes out, he tells it.

⁷ All who hate me whisper together against me;
Against me they devise my hurt.
⁸ “An evil disease,” they say, “clings to him.
And now that he lies down, he will rise up no more.”
⁹ Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted,
Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me.

¹⁰ But You, O Lord, be merciful to me, and raise me up,
That I may repay them.
¹¹ By this I know that You are well pleased with me,
Because my enemy does not triumph over me.
¹² As for me, You uphold me in my integrity,
And set me before Your face forever.

¹³ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
From everlasting to everlasting!
Amen and Amen.

Blessed is he who considers the poor

I certainly can’t speak for everyone else, but I know that often times I can be a “Sunday Christian.” It’s easy to be, right. You go to church on Sunday, and throughout the rest of the week, you have some vague idea that God is out there, maybe calling on Him once or twice for really super-important things.

Even when I’m better than that in my spiritual life, I struggle with what exactly I’m supposed to be doing to share God. It’s not that I don’t want to be a better Christian. I just don’t know how all the time. Maybe it’s the easiest thing in the world for you to walk up to someone and start talking about Christ. An old pastor I had seemed to think that was the way to do things. Being an extreme introvert, though, it sometimes takes a lot of energy for me to talk to a lot of people about anything. I felt like a failure, like I wasn’t doing what God wanted me to because the first words out of my mouth when meeting a new person weren’t along the lines of “do you know how to get to Heaven?”

Then, some things changed for me. First, two women dressed in jean skirts knocked on my door. I was partially annoyed because I was watching Vampire Diaries (don’t judge) and they were interrupting my break before I had to get back to work. But, as long as they were just inviting me to church, it was no problem. I said thank you, but they didn’t go away. They asked me if I was a born again Christian. I replied that I was, but they still didn’t go away. They asked me how I knew for sure. I shut the door in their faces. I suddenly realized how it felt to be on the receiving end of this offensive Christianity, and it wasn’t fun. It made me wonder how they can possibly get anyone interested in Christ. They came to my home, interrupted what I was doing, and interrogated me. I think they may have been doing more harm than good.

Then, just this past Sunday, I heard a speaker who said that only about 10% of believers are gifted with evangelism. If you’re not one of them, God doesn’t expect you to be out there evangelizing (not that we should use that as an excuse when He wants something done, Moses). He’s given you a different gift, and he expects you to use that. It reminded me of an argument that made me feel a lot better when I first went to college. We often think that God wants us all to be ministers and Sunday School teachers and probably sing in the choir too. If we’re going to teach, it should be at a Christian school, if we’re going to work the fryers, we should go to Chick-fil-a. But, that’s not the fact. God has planned something different for each of us. I, for example, am quite confident that God wanted me to be in the Classics department at KU where I study people from the past who were “Pagans” and for a time were even making it their business to kill Christians. And I love them. Do I know why I’m here? No, but that doesn’t matter. I know that it’s where I’m supposed to be.

So, what does all this have to do with the psalm, you ask? Well…I don’t know. I got a little off-course. But, I do have a point. Our faith is so much more than religion. We are called to do things that have nothing to do with our religion because we are meant to be that light in dark places (when all other lights go out?). In this psalm, as well as in many places throughout the Bible, God calls us to community service. Here, the one who considers the poor is blessed—the person who is out with the needy, the homeless, orphans, the sick, the downtrodden in general, and anyone who could just use a helping hand. We aren’t called to go door to door selling religion. We are called to go help people who need it, and through our compassion and willingness to serve others, show Christ to everyone, not only the people we’re helping, but all the people around us.

As for me, You uphold me in my integrity,
And set me before Your face forever.

When we consider the poor lots of stuff happens in between, and in the end, this promise comes. God upholds our integrity and keeps us with Him forever. What is integrity? In a loose definition, it can be “moral uprightness,” which is a fine definition. I was thinking of its Latin root, integer, which means something like “untouched” in its base meaning. But, it can also mean “fresh,” “unexhausted,” or “free from prejudice,” all definitions which would be great when we consider the original beatitude of this psalm. We are to seem fresh to those who are far from God, to show them his peace; we must be unexhausted as we work His plans; we ought to be free from prejudice when we work with those who are less fortunate or who don't know God. Only when we’ve done this can we fulfill God’s command to help the poor and attain blessing for it.