July 27 – Thoughts on Psalm 43-45 & Acts 27:27-44

Ps. 44 is a remarkable Psalm of trust in God, though reading it at first glance leads to other conclusions.  Initially it looks like a Psalm of lament.  God’s people, through the Psalmist, are crying out in confusion.  “What have we done that you have abandoned us,” they cry.  They cannot understand that though they have been faithful, God has left them to their enemies.  Lament indeed.

Yet the underlying belief system is one of faith and trust.  To ask God why He seems to have abandoned them is to assume that God is just.  If we follow, they reason, we know You will bless us, yet You haven’t.  What gives?

To ask God why He hides His face is to assume that this is unusual, and that normally God reveals His face to His people and watches over them.

To ask God why He sleeps is to assume that His absence in the fight, His lack of blessing upon His people, means something has happened to turn Him away because He is always there.

The very questions they ask God in their lament reveal their trust in Him and His care for them.

Do you ever find that your faith reveals itself in your lament?  When you cry out to God for abandoning you, does this reveal that God is normally with you and that abandonment is unusual to the point of terrifying?

We know that God is with us.  We know that God is just.  We know that God does not leave us without reason.  We can cling to that in faith even when they are disrupted for a time.  Perhaps especially then.