Reading… and Thinking

You have held my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak…
I will meditate with my heart,
And my spirit ponders:
Will the Lord reject forever?
And will He never be favorable again?
Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?
Has His promise come to an end forever?
Has God forgotten to be gracious,
Or has He in anger withdrawn His compassion?

— Psalm 77:4-9 (NASB)

Many believers have faced these questions. When life is going badly, when we can see no way forward, despair seeps into our mind, and leaves room for nothing else.

The Bible is not a “happy” book. It never conveys the message, “Everything’s wonderful! Everything’s beautiful! Every one of God’s children is happy!” This is the message of some Christians, but I believe they are, sadly, doomed to lose their faith when trouble comes crashing in.

The Bible offers no false pretenses. It portrays life as it really is: a mixture of wonderful blessings, routine work, and troubles that are sometimes terrible. It isn’t all shiny and bright. There’s a lot of tragedy in life, and life invariably ends with the ultimate tragedy of death.

What the Bible does is to explain why things are this way. Mankind is in trouble. Your own eyes tell you that, and religions that deny it ask you to disbelieve the evidence of your own life. The Bible tells us why we’re in trouble: we’re at odds with God because of sin. The honesty of the Bible’s approach makes us appreciate how wonderful the offer of immortality and freedom from suffering really is. But these things remain for the future.

Despair is the reaction of the human mind to the reality of the bleak state we are in by nature. But it looks at only one side of things. The shiny-bright “happy religion” is false because it closes its eyes to the troubles and sees only the blessings. Despair is the opposite problem. The perversity of our nature is such that we will close our eyes to the blessings, and concentrate only on the troubles! Despair is fundamentally a false view of life.

The writer of this psalm gives us the secret to overcoming despair. It’s not a “don’t worry, be happy” message. He recognizes that feelings of despair do come, when we just can’t see how any good will ever come. Here’s what he suggests is the true remedy: “I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds. Your ways, O God, are holy. What god is so great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles.” (verses 11-14 NIV)

We have excellent evidence, eyewitness testimony, of the wonderful things God has done in the past. People couldn’t see how they could get through, but God helped them. That tells us the kind of God we are involved with. He sees, and He cares. He is able to turn the darkest moment into the brightest. The writer doesn’t say, “Cheer up! It’s not so bad!” Rather, he says, “You will have to endure for awhile, and wait. Deliverance will come. And when it does, there will be cause for rejoicing.” He doesn’t minimize the trouble, he maximizes the power of God to carry us through our trouble, to overcome our trouble. And that’s a much more believable, ultimately much more comforting message.