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(Psalms 6, 8-10, 14, 16, 19, 21)
The death of Ish-Bosheth, though David didnt approve, signified the official public reign of David. And it traditionally it seems that he takes the time to look back on his life, take inventory, and see how he got this far. And all the credit, as these Psalms that he is credited with as writing at this time, he gives to God.
He looks back, and he remembers all those people who asked him, in the darkest and most desperate times, “Where is God?” And though he may have wavered at the question as all of us do at times, he always knew–God was where God always is–on the side of the innocent, on the side of those who try to do the right thing, on those who stick it out and cling to faith whatever come what may.
It was David’s faith in God that no matter what the situation–a Shaq-sized Philistine, a bi-polar King who threw spears at him, constantly outmatched–no matter what the situation, God was there. When the odds were against him, when the way was blocked, always on the run, God was there and was already (somehow) sorting things out.
Same goes for us. On a morning like this, when you may be facing unemployment, redeployment, foreclosure, downsizing–a group at school that teases you, a test on a subject you just arent getting–confrontations with a boss, criticism from peers, a critically ill family member–on a morning like this, you may ask yourself “Where is God?”
But these Psalms remind us that God is there, in the chair or couch where you sit and read this blog. God is there, where you stand checking this post on your Blackberry. God is there in the mess that life can become, sorting things out.
Peterson puts it this way. Wherever you find yourself, whatever you face, wherever you must go “God sees and sets the world’s mess right”(from Psalm 9.7-8, the Message).
Know that. As I always remind people at the end of every service, “Wherever you are, God is, and all will be well!”
(1Samuel 18-21; Psalm 18)
David was serving in the Philistine army. What better place when the leader of your own country was hunting you down? Yet as the Philistine army was marching to war against Israel, God stepped in to prevent David from having to fight his own people.
Though seemingly committed to follow through and fight with the Philistines against his own people, committed either because he felt he’d never go back or because he needed the protection of the foreign army, the Philistine commanders were doubtful whether or David would actually fight or not. They considered him a liability, so they dismissed him. And David willingly left.
But when he returned to his current “home away from home,” he found that it had been raided, everything taken–included his two wives, Ahinoam and Abigail. His anger alone wasnt enough to have him set off against the raiding army. Considering the odds, how much distance they might have already put between them, David needed motivation.
So he turned to God. Through prayer he plugged into God’s strength and encouragement. “Can I do it?” David asked. “Of course you can,” God answered.
Can I do it? How often do we ask ourselves that question, but at those times the answer we most often give ourselves is, Of course not. You’re not good enough. You dont have the resources. You dont have what it takes. It’s that ugly voice in our head that creeps in when we’re tired, frustrated–when life piles up like two feet of slushy winter snow and all we have is a garden spade.
That’s when we have to go to God with it. The only voice that drowns out the other is God’s gentle yet firm one. “Can I do it?” Of course you can!
That strength … that strength that we recognize near the end of a long trial, when we sigh, “I didnt know I had it in me.” That strength comes from God. When the snow is just about cleared from the drive. When the credit card balance is finally three digits. When exam week is just about through. The last round of treatment. The morning you wake up close to a year after a loss and you realize that it is getting a little better. What got you to that point? God’s strength, the strength that came because you trusted God with it.
Can you do it? Is the next year the one when you turn it all around? After a long weekend that only delayed the inevitable challenges of the week to come, do you have what it takes to face them with confidence and strength? Of course you do, because God is already waiting there to face them with you.
(Psalm 7, 27,31, 34, 52)
Hiding out in caves and hollers (as we call them in Southern Indiana) David had a lot of time to think.
How had it all come to this? Successful in every battle he faced, with a wife who adored him, agreat friend who supported him in everything he did, faithful in his service to the king–everything seemed to be going his way.
He didnt understand it. What happened? One minute he was at the king’s right hand, playing his songs–the next, he was dodging spears. Every command, he more than obeyed. Everything he was asked, he answered with a resounding Yes in word and action. Yet still, the King wanted him dead.
Why? He had tried his best. He did everything that was asked of him. He poured his blood, sweat, tears into his work and this was what he got? On the run, hiding out in caves, far from his wife, having to cut a deal with the King of Moab so he knew his family was safe–it wasnt fair.
With all these thoughts racing through his head, trying to figure out a why for which there was no answer, tradition tells us that David opened up his journal and wrote–volumes of raw emotions in poetic form that we call the Psalms. And for those who are felling a lot like David, here’s what he wrote. It certainly helped David get through frustrating times when nothing was going his way–hope they help you too.
Stay with God.
Take heart.
Dont quit.
I’ll say it again:
Stay with God.Be brave.
Be strong.
Dont give up.
Expect God to get here soon.If yr heart is broken, you’ll find God right there;
if you’re kicked in the gut, God’ll help you catch yr breath.I thank you always that you went into action.
And I’ll stay right here;
yr good name my hope
in company with yr faithful friends.
____________________________________________________
quotations: Psalm 27.14; 31.24; 34.18; 52.9
translation: The Message, by Eugene Peterson
(Deuteronomy 31-34; Psalm 91)
“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you.”
Deut. 31:6 (MsgB)
Our God is striding ahead
of us, already crossed
the river that flows in front
of us, already standing
on the other shore, calling
to us, “Come on, cross over!”
Our God is striding ahead
of us, the God of past and
present AND future, the God
of ages past and ages
to come, the God who has been,
who is now, and who will come.
Our God is striding ahead
of us, but we stand grounded,
feet firmly planted, but not
in the good way–stagnate and
complacent we stand on the
near shore while God stands yonder.
Our God is striding ahead
of us, but we won’t risk our
lives. Better to be safe than
truly blest as God would bless
us were we to cross over,
get our feet wet, and climb up
the other bank where God waits.
The river, a great divide,
the great obstacle that stands
in the way of who we can
be, who God calls us to be,
of who God sav’d us to be.
One bright morning, when this day is over
(I’ll fly away).
To a place on God’s celesital shore
(I’ll fly away).
Our God is striding ahead
of us. Consider not the
rapids, consider not the
whitewater peril or the
snapping jaws of pirana,
consider only the Grace,
for the Lord God has parted
the water, has cross’d over
Godself, and stands where you can
stand, and calls from where you can
be, if only you take the
first step, and get yr feet wet.
(Numbers 21-22)
This is one of those funny God stories. When the people are griping and complaining, what does God do—sent them snakes.
“Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?!”
I agree with Indiana Jones and the Israelites, ANYTHING else but snakes. EXCEPT wasps—I need an explanation from God on the existence of wasps.
Yet when the Israelites were complaining, God sent snakes. Why? To show them that life really bites sometimes. Figuratively, literally. THEN, when they cry out saying, “Okay, okay, we GET IT?” what does God do? Does God take away the snakes?
NO. God tells Moses—”You know that logo you see on the side of drugstores, hanging in doctor’s offices–the snake wrapped around the pole thing? Yeah, do that and tell people to look at it. Then they’ll be alright.”
God doesnt take away the snakes; instead God just gives an antidote for snakebite in the pole that Moses lifts in the wilderness. Later, isnt it in John that Jesus compares himself to this snake on a pole? The point being that Jesus didnt die and rise again to make us sin-free, but to free us from sin so that we might live in Christ.
Anyway, the point so that I can wrap this up and head to the Presbytery Assembly meeting where we’re installing our new Presbyter for Common Life. The point: GOD WONT TAKE YOUR PROBLEMS AWAY. I’m sorry, but God wont. Life does bite sometime. YET GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO DEAL WITH YOUR PROBLEMS. We have grace, forgiveness, new life. We have truth. Hope. We have faith. Above all we have love. None of these will take our problems away, but dont they make them a lot easier to deal with?
Ezekiel 4.1-17; Hebrews 6.1-12
Faith and patience.
It is easy to believe, to accept much of life on faith. It is easier, yet, to un-believe, to give away yr faith at the tick of a clock. One frustration, one obstacle, one passing word—Here, take it, I dont need it.
Faith and patience. Patient endurance. The faith of one that never turns away, the faith of one baking bread on a cow dung fire for the empathy of those who turn away so easily—scattered into foreign lands b/c of abandoned faith.
Weeds and thorns. Twisting and choking the fruit we may bear. These adorn a garden where roses ought to bloom. They are God’s seeming delay, our lack of confidence in ourselves. The thought that catches hold and hangs on—Maybe God wont … Maybe God isnt even there.
Selling a house? Finding a job? Facing rejection? Lost a loved one? Battling depression? Being teased at school for going to church? Does the world have you backed into a corner where not even hope can move you forward anymore?
Listen to the latch, the turning of a key, a door opening, and God saying, This way. Let faith draw you forward.
But it’s a long hallway, as someone once pointed out. A dark passage where the flourescent bulbs flicker, the wallpaper peels, floorboards creek.
Walking the passage is not hell. Staying in the corner is.
Between that dark corner and the light shining through the open door—that’s where life is truly lived.
And the way we get through is faith and patience.
Here’s the sermon illustration I’ve used for my sermon on May 17th. The article tells a moving story about another family whose lives were forever changed by someone who had made a bad decision. But when preaching a sermon about being conquerors of “the world”–in Greek, the sinful nature that opposes God rooted mostly in human selfishness and bad decisions–I chose Kelly’s story not only b/c of her accomplishments in coming back from traumatic injuries, but the way she used her voice to speak of her experience in overcoming bad decisions.
Faith & Hope: Impact of drunken driving lingers long after a crash | Dothan Eagle.
Luke 8.40-56
She wasnt kept in chains in a cemetery like Batallion, but she may as well have been.
The woman was among the living dead. No one could touch her, especially not a man. Not in her condition.
She walked as if a woman twice her years, bent over, eyes always to the ground. It was no problem though, passing through crowds. They parted like wheat in the wind as she moved through. IF she moved through. Usually, she kept to herself. It was the Law, after all.
But today she braved the crowds. She stood as straight as her abdomen would allow, and kept her eyes on the man ahead of her, his cloak swaying back and forth as he moved along amidst the crowd.
She had heard about the man on the other side of the lake, the one who had been transformed. This man Jesus had given him HIS life back, breaking the chains of his imprisonment with a touch. He could do the same for her.
Quickly now she swam through the crowd. She brushed up against them. She didnt care. One way or the other it was all about to be over. She would either be healed, or else stoned for her sin—intentionally condemning a man to her unholiness by her tender touch.
Arm outstretched, tears in her eyes, faith in her heart so deep that she didnt care about anything, anyone else but Jesus.
The fringe of his cloak was soft to the touch, but it was as if she had touched a live current. A wave washed over her, a momentary pain as if she had been kicked in the gut that had condemned her to her lifelong prison. And then … nothing.
She stood up straight, for the first time since her pubescent rite of passage. Laying her hands on her belly, the tears fell like rain.
“Who touched me?”
“Who can tell?” Peter and the others replied. “Look around you. Take your pick.”
She never thought of running. She was standing for the first time in her life, as tall as any man. Lifting her chin, wiping her eyes, she spoke. Things couldnt get any worse for her b/c everything was better.
“I did. I touched you b/c I believed. I believed that you could do for me as you had for that man in the graveyard. And as you have done to the least such as me, I believe that you can do for anyone.”
She waited for the rebuke of the crowd. For them to take up stones. But Jesus spoke before any of them could react.
“Such faith has made you well. Go in Shalom.”
But she didnt. She just stood there, as the messenger from the synagogue came and told the father that his daughter was dead.
“Not dead,” she thought to herself. “Only sleeping.”
She had seen the look in Jesus’ eyes. She had felt his power in her body. So too would the girl feel it in hers.
Here was a man who was giving people their lives back, and she knew he wasnt finished yet.
Colossians 1.1-14
A letter. An opening. A prayer. A prayer for those only known by reputation, that God may help them keep it up. An eternal prayer … thanksgiving for the congregation in Colossae as much as one in New Albany, New York, Seoul—wherever the faithful continue the spread of Good News for all time.
A credit. One of the most offensive things that has ever been said to another is that they are a credit to their race or gender. As if race or gender is something to overcome.
Paul says, though, that we should be a credit to something, or else someONE—God. Our lives a credit to God. An Hallelujah in every breath. Praise with every word. Glory given in all that we do. A credit to our Creator.
A shout-out to the Holy. The Living Word, continually made flesh again and again. In you, in me. Reflections of the Divine, yet seen in fogged-up mirrors. The hand of the Spirit, as if making a circle w/ a handtowel so that we can see enough to buzz a razor on our cheek—brush our teeth—look ourselves in ever-brightening eyes, and say, “How can I bear fruit for God today?”
How can my life be a credit to my Creator?
