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.”