O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.” vss. 4-5
Psalm 80:4-7
It’s not unusual to hear people complain about God. Many cannot understand how a good God could have created a world in which so many ugly things are going on, seemingly without end. We’ve heard those promises about a peaceable kingdom and restoration, but we get tired of waiting. Even now at Christmas, as we get ready to celebrate our Savior’s birth, awful things keep on happening, and we long for some sort of respite. And so we join the psalmist in his complaint, “How long O Lord will you be angry with your people’s prayers? How long will our food and drink consist of nothing but our never-ending tears?” Those are hard questions, and we shouldn’t feel bad for asking them. They come naturally to us because we can’t quite comprehend the Divine Presence, or as J. B. Phillips, a famous bible translator, once wrote, “Your God is Too Small.” Caught as we are in our little fragment of time and space, our minds can’t quite grasp the larger picture, and we likely never will. What we do know is that God’s love is unconditional, and we are never apart from God in our suffering. In fact, God loves us so much that God suffers with us!
Thought for the Day: When have I been angry at God?
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