I’m really fortunate to be living in Australia. Where life is a lot freer, safe and generally quite peaceful. I’m free to believe in whatever I want, and the worse I can suffer for my faith is the social stigma attach to Christianity resulting in at the very worse not having any friends. That’s okay.
But when you become an exile like the psalmist here, running away from his oppressors, and only having tears as his food (v.3), you know you got the shit end of the stick.
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?" (NIV)
That is some serious pain and persecution by my reckoning, that even the scathing sarcasm of his foes is as painful as the breaking of bones. And like I said, I’m grateful once again that I have never been through such mortal agony before in my life.
On the continuum that is pain, though I’ve never suffered such hardship, pain is still there. The question now is what do you do to deal with the pain.
As I’ve been going through the psalms, my hesitations with many of the depressing prose is slowly diminishing, as I recognise that with God it’s alright to express such feelings. And the one thing that remains constant through it all is that despite those adverse circumstances of mortal agony, God is always praised, and hope is in Him.
11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life, Psalm
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