The Psalms are the human voice of praise and despair; joy and doubt; fear and faith lifted up to God. In the 88th Psalm, the Psalmist begins in confidence: "O LORD, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry."
The Psalmist begins with the hopeful faith that it is God who saves him/her, and it is God who will hear his/her cry. God will answer the offered prayer.
But then, life with its troubles and sorrows enters in and causes the Psalmist to doubt. Yes, we understand this. When our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears and remain unanswered, we too begin to question:"Why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?" Like the Psalmist, we often blame God as well: "Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me."
When we read the Psalms, perhaps they can help us to hear and see ourselves, to hear and see our faulty reasoning. Humans are a funny lot. It's important to us that God give us free will----the power to choose and decide for ourselves----yet when things go wrong, we want to be able to blame God. After all, these things can not be the consequences of our actions, can they? Bad things can't be the result of us living in an imperfect and broken world.......someone has to be at fault, right?
The Psalmist has it so right to turn to God for his/her prayer, his/her plea and need. But, like the Psalmist, when we begin to think that God's job is to keep us from all harm and suffering, that God's job is to wall us off from the consequences of living--instead of empowering and enabling us to embrace life by bringing forth God's light into the shadows of life---then we need to recognize our veering off the path of discipleship. We need to be able to identify our faulty understanding of how God acts and how God moves in our lives.
The Psalms are wonderful writings that enable us to hear ourselves as we speak with God. The Psalms can help us to discern where and when we are in alignment with God's Kingdom and where and when we have become lost.
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