Random Encouragement from the Psalms - Pt. 5

 

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (Psalm 42:5-11 ESV).

 

I wrote yesterday that in times of loneliness we should praise God. I thought that seemed too simple to really be believable. After all, there are times in life when we don’t feel much like praising or worshipping God. We don’t jump at the opportunity to tell God how good he is when we know how bad our life is. It doesn’t take much of life to begin to move us from hopeful to hopeless. Perhaps you have had those moments in your life. They shake us to our very core.

 

However, we cannot deny that the psalms repeatedly call on us to praise God. When the writer finds himself in the pits of despair he never forgets to remember that God is still God and so is to be worshipped. The Worship of God is more than just a certain segment of a church service, though it can include that. Worship is a whole of life offering of ourselves to a worthy God. It is an acknowledgment of who God is and who we are in relation to him. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, summarized worship in this way:

 

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

 

None of that depends on our personal circumstances but is simply a recognition of a God who is above and beyond our circumstances. When we worship God in this way, we don’t pretend all is well — the Psalmist certainly didn’t. We simply realize that there is a reality greater than our circumstances and worship enables to focus on this greater reality. Worship of God is not escapism. Nor is it a quick fix for all our problems. It is simply facing up to the most basic truth of all: that God remains God no matter how we feel about him or about life. And, in returning to that reality we are able to know and feel the truth of hope even when our circumstances calls us to hopelessness.