“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1 EHV) Have you forgotten me, God? When will you answer my prayer? How often do you think that God should answer you quickly? In the modern world, with search engines at our fingertips, we want answers immediately. Our minds move at the speed of light, it seems, and waiting for God to answer us seems to take forever. I know I’m guilty of that. I want to know my future NOW, and know how I’ll get there. Right now I want to know which next step to take to get my bright future instead of the stressful present, but God doesn’t work that way.
David cried for help when he felt that God was ignoring him.
In the days when Psalms was written, the writers were surrounded by Near Eastern religion, especially the worship of Baal and Asherah. Those two are written about numerous times, the Israelites kept getting involved in that worship and God kept bringing them back to Him. My point is that one of the main parts of that religion is that those gods were just like people to their worshipers. While nowadays we think of God as always watching and lovingly guiding, back then Baal would get distracted from his followers. He would look away and need to have something grab his attention for him to hear his followers. When Elijah challenged the worshipers of Baal to get his attention, they tried ritual dancing,shouting, even cutting themselves and “prophetic frenzy” to get his attention. (1 Kings 18:26-29) Those were practices that David knew about when he asked God why He turned His face from David. The king knew that if God wanted to, He could cure David, so David asked why He was ignoring David’s pain.
But he trusted in God’s eternal love.
As desperate as David was to be saved, he trusted that God would rescue him because of His unending love. Even though David had seen God punish Israel and even been punished himself a few times, he never doubted God’s unfailing love. What an example to us all!
Comments
Post a Comment