Results Of A Rumination

I am close to concluding that some of my thoughts about God are carried as truths deeply cemented into my mind. Thoughts like; God is good, that Christ forgives, that God is a God of grace and mercy and strength. For most of my life, I have repeated these qualities, as it were, on cue, or given as gently correction from a friend when vision has become skewed: God loves you. God is in the midst of your situation. You are forgiven. These phrases are known by heart, even if there are times I have not applied them to my own:

"Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold" (Psalm 73:1-2).
But as for Me

In these ancient words of Psalms, appears an all too familiar personal lament, exposed in the expression of another soul. There are times when what is true for all of Israel doesn't seem so true for me.

Since the sermon yesterday, I have reviewed some of the reasons I single myself out from time to time as being separated from a particular promise or attribute of God. It may be that I am feeling cast aside from God's presence or forgiveness because something is blocking my view of God’s mercy. In my very admission of feeling overlooked, I believe the Spirit is attempting to draw me toward the face of God and away from the things that distance me. Other times a false sense of humility or remnants of shame from previous mistakes has caused me a false vision of the Cross. Still other times I find myself feeling alienated because it seems God has indeed overlooked me. Surely God is good to Israel. But as for me...

No matter the spirit in which it is spoken, the addendum is a heartfelt cry. Yet, in a way, the words themselves cast me away from God as I draw myself in sharp distinction from what I know to be true. The truth is not moved by my addendums; I am.

Even so, I am discovering, it is mercifully in my attempts to air my complaints before God that I often discover this paradox, and the God who is in the midst of it. As C.S. Lewis's Orual observes in Til We have Faces, to have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered.

I see where the writer of Psalm 73 vividly articulates the frustration that caused him to feel overlooked and cast aside, he begins to see his own offenses in the midst of it. The psalmist seems to discover how these offenses, including his own pride—and not God Himself—have kept him from the hope of Israel. "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked," says the psalmist. "I was so foolish and ignorant, I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you" (vv. 3, 22). But then in the midst of feeling singled out by his own wrongdoing, the writer responds to his own shame with a certainty of which he may or may not feel ownership, but knows is true all the same: "Yet I still belong to you; you are holding my right hand" (73:22-23).

So, Bill what is the lesson you have learned after a day and night of ruminating? In those times when I find myself mentally articulating a disparity between God's character and my experience of it, an inconsistency between things I know and things I feel, there is no more important defense: Yet I still belong to you; you are holding my right hand. There is good reason God asks me to bind his words upon my heart, to talk about them on the road and impress them on my children, their spouses, and my grandchildren, to write them on the door frames of my house and on my gate. There are going to be moments I the remaining days of my life when I will need what is true to override what is felt.

In such a vein, the psalmist, who began his song with an admission of being overlooked by the God of Israel, concludes his song with a declaration of reconciliation and the certainty of inclusion.

"But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds" (Psalm 73:28).

This, may I know by heart and practice it much more than before!