I am very fortunate and blessed to lead a Bible study, twice a week, at church as a part of my job as Christian Education Director. (Some might use the verb "teach," but I often learn as much from the group members as I share, and often times they teach me in ways I could not have anticipated.)
We currently have a session on Monday nights and a session on Tuesday mornings, covering the same book and lesson so that both working folks and retired folks have an opportunity to gather in study together. These groups have been a big blessing to me this Lenten season.
I have felt led to share some of what we discussed this week, so I hope you, as my blog readers, won't mind a slight detour from the usual parenting and recipe topics I usually post.
In preparation for this week (week 5 of 6 of the study Finding Jesus in the Psalms by Barb Roose), we read Psalm 69, with suggested New Testament readings from Matthew 26 and John 18.
In both sessions, we talked about how King David experiences the full gamut of human emotion - grief and overwhelm, guilt and shame, frustration and anger, affliction and pain - but he doesn't end there. He ends this fairly long psalm - which, in my opinion, has a sense of being like a very raw, personal journal entry - with a prophetic word: he calls out the messianic promises and future reality in God's plan - that God will restore Zion (which we see in Revelation and the teachings of Jesus to be Heaven), and he calls out the promise of dwelling forever in God's house (again, Heaven or eternity).
This is so important: David doesn't end with his own downtrodden emotions, but with the promises of God, in a prophetic understanding that only God Himself could have given to David.
David was an ancient Jewish man - they religiously and culturally did not have the same understanding of eternity that we have as Christians in a post-Resurrection society. And yet God ordained David, appointed him, and anointed him. God directed him when he would accept direction; God gave him the ability to see and share His vision for His people. God gave him an understanding of life after "here," of salvation, and of messianic signs that would not have made sense to most others in that time and place.
God used an imperfect man (who committed numerous sins and lived through numerous sorrows and numerous joys) to help pen and foreshadow His ultimate plan - our salvation and our eternity.
I write this to share that if King David, his heart hurting so badly as he wrote this psalm (even writing that he is sinking and drowning and worn out), can end his litany of distress with a call to the hope that God has for us, then so can we. In the midst of personal hardship, we can remind ourselves that God is good and has a plan for our future with Him.
Whatever your hurt is - loss of loved ones, fracturing of relationships, illness or disease, financial concerns, employment loss, etcetera - please hear me when I say that I'm so sorry the world has been so cold. I'm so sorry that humanity so frequently causes pain, frustration, and grief. God is warm, and God is good, in the midst of the highs and lows of human experience.
Perhaps, as you pour over a list your own grievances and concerns, you - like David - can add a few words of hope at the end of the list.
Psalm 69:29-36 (NIV)
But as for me, afflicted and in pain - may your salvation, God, protect me. I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hooves. The poor will see and be glad - you who seek God, may your hearts live! The Lord hears the needy and does not despise his captive people. Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and all that move in them, for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it; the children of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will dwell there.
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