Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-004 Sunday 07 Jan 2001

Reading: PSALM 44 – YOU ALONE ARE WORTHY

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

Give thanks to God for his great love. Remind yourself that love is the reason he will always listen to your praise and thanksgiving.

One of the great ways to cheer ourselves up each day is to remember what we had to face the day before! The writer of this psalm mentions two things from the past: the way God helped his people by crushing their enemies (vs 1-8), and the way God humbled his people (vs 9-26). It’s a game of two halves. The writer approves of the first half and is humbled by the second. He cannot see what it is in the people’s conduct which has brought about the change (vs 17,18,20,21).

We can be encouraged by this. The sufferings we face are not all because of our sins (see Job 42:7-9), and our triumphs are not all because we are worthy of credit. We are often tempted to think they are, but Shakespeare gave wise words to Hamlet: ‘Use every man after his desert and who shall ‘scape whipping?’. Let us become neither smug nor unduly worried about the circumstances we face.

Then where is God? If he is not punishing or rewarding as simply as we sometimes think, what is he doing? He is working out his plans which may involve us in ways we never thought of. Look at verse 22 again.

I have a friend whose husband was lost in an accident. Two years later she asked, with frightening honesty, ‘If God is not involved in ordinary cause and effect circumstances, then where do we look for him?’ We cannot easily answer except in the ways that Job’s comforters answered him, and they were worse than useless. Perhaps we have to read again the last verse of this psalm. ‘Please, God, help us for your love’s sake. Enable us to trust even when we don’t understand.’

Consider what it means to your life today that God is love, and his character is unchanging.

– Ken Edgecombe

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001