Has God has forgotten me? Things happen that make us question the goodness of God. A dear one dies. Painful illness with no relief. Laid off from work and broke. No repair in broken relationships. In Ukraine, suffering and death from war. In America, innocents mowed down by mass shooters. Are You hearing our prayers for help?
Psalm 44: “All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way; yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (17-22).
That merits more than a minute of meditation. The psalmist agrees with long-suffering Job, “Thou he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15). When your prayers seem unanswered, when you wonder where the goodness of God is, you are at the place of faith. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). “No man can be thoroughly humbled until he knows that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, devices, endeavors, will, and works, and depends entirely on the choice, will, and work of another, namely, of God alone” (Martin Luther, “The Bondage of the Will”).
Jesus has been there. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1). Faith focuses on how it turned out for Him. “Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:34-37).
“He lives to comfort me when faint; He lives to hear my soul’s complaint” (Lutheran Service Book 461:4).
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