lent day 6 - Ps 43

A few years ago as a ' spiritual exercise' I decided to rewrite the psalms in my own words.   It was a really interesting thing to do.  When you are trying to paraphrase something you have to think about it carefully.  You have to try to see what it is really saying and then translate that into something which is meaningful and which makes sense.   And then theres the extra challenge with some of the psalms of trying to get across the mood of the writer.  Sometimes sad, sometimes angry, often questioning, they are writings full of emotions.

Yesterday I was reading Psalm 43.  It is one of the many psalms which start off with a bit of a lament and a moan  ' why are all these people around me being so deceitful and arrogant and ungodly? Evil seems to be winning.  And why are You ignoring me in the midst of all this trouble?'

It is a cry we hear all the time in our modern world.  ' If God is so good and so kind and just then where is He when the twin towers are falling or the refugees are starving or the earthquakes and tsunamis are happening?'   We need to be ready with an answer to that question because it is one which comes up time and time again.  Im somewhat comforted to know that even David asked it - and also answered it in the next breath.  His answer is interesting.

To the question ' Where are You God'  what we usually mean is ' Why are you not in the place I expect you to be - in the middle of the trouble?  Sorting the famine.  Stopping the accident or the cot death. '  The question supposes that if we shout at God loudly enough He will come to us where we are.

But David seems to have found an alternative answer

3 O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your dwelling.

4 Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy; yes, with the lyre will I praise You, O God, my God!

David understands that what needs to happen is not for God to move into our space and our mess but for us to move into His presence, His light and life and truth.   When we praise Him we see Him as He is.  When we enter into the holy of holies we step away from the mess in our thinking and see from an entirely different perspective - an eternal one.  We understand that God is huge and mighty.  He is strong and holy.  He is all powerful and all present and has the universe in the span of His hand.  In that place the sins of the world are as a drop in the ocean.  In His presence is joy because we suddenly see the woes and trials and troubles of this life in the light of His amazing salvation plan.

And then we can say with David

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.