This week I welcome guest blogger, Jeff Byerly. Jeff is my pastoral colleague, friend, ThD classmate, and traveling partner! He and his wife Tasha have two daughters, a son-in-law and new grandbaby!
In the first post, I mentioned the zeitgeist that we seem to be under—with things beyond our control.
It’s always been this way, but for some reason, things seem worse now—much worse!
In the previous post, I asked, “How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” I’m talking about Psalm 137, a song of lament written about Israel’s exile in Babylon.
To make matters worse for these captives, some of their prophets had assured them that they would live in peace. Of course, after these events, everyone realized that those prophets were false prophets.
We too may have listened to the voices of well-meaning prophets.
They’ve told us how our version of God is supposed to work when we are put to the test. We may have always been taught: “God’s got your back.” “God will bless his children.” “God’s will can never be frustrated.”
So where does that leave us? We feel abandoned by God.
We can feel like God is a million miles away, like Israel’s exiles we’re sitting by a strange river, 700 miles away or more—across a large desert; without any hope of bridging the distance between us.
You have entered a foreign land that reminds you continually of your desperate situation.
What are you going to do now?
One of the beautiful aspects of a lament is that it often provides empathy in your despair. And yet, an even more beautiful feature can be realized when the psalmist points us toward God in verse 7:
“Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.“
When we focus on God, we recognize some things:
- We are not alone. And we have never been alone.
- God is present even in our despair, even when it seems we can’t reach him.
- God is aware. We can know that our situations do not escape his notice.
In the next post, we’ll continue following the psalmist’s lament, learning how lament brings us hope in the middle of our pain.
Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 