Forsake Me Not

Psalm 71, Part II

“God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him” / "You who have made me to see trouble and calamities will revive me again."

Many people are watching me right now and, while they may not be uttering the words of the Psalmist's enemies, some of them probably believe that I am forsaken by the Lord or that I have no deliverer. There are those who fear that I have, somehow, either set myself or been set by God (or fate) upon a path of sure destruction. The Psalmist anticipates these attacks--both on his physical body and on God's character--and cries out to the only one who can save.

He asks the Lord to be his defense and then conceptualizes and affirms his own appropriate response, namely to hope, praise, and tell. This response is instructive to me when I feel my heart vascillating under the weight of others' beliefs about my condition--medical, emotional, or spiritual--or their resulting actions toward me. "And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt." I cry out to the Lord in faith and express that faith to others through hope-filled words that point beyond my condition and my pain to the God who has allowed it for my good.

Yet the danger posed by the opinions or actions of men is not the crucible in which the most arduous testing occurs. The same Psalmist who pleads for help against his external enemies makes an astounding statement when he exclaims, "You who have made me to see trouble and calamities will revive me again." The Psalmist indicates that my hardships are ultimately coming not from the hands of my enemies but from the hand of my God.

You who have made me to see trouble-this truth changes everything. It changes both the way that I cry and also the way that I cry out. My pastor used a medical metaphor this morning to explain how the law functions in the life of a Christian. I won't quote him perfectly, but I believe that he described the law as a "sharp scalpel in the hand of a skillful surgeon". Though it inflicts pain, it does so only to expose and cure sickness. I see my illness as functioning in a similar way. It is, first, revealing and then parsimoniously extracting deep-seated areas of unbelief in my heart.

This fact changes the nature of the danger that I face entirely (as I blogged about earlier this week). Danger, for me, is not located in a physical condition but in a faithless heart. Peril is not the absence of a vindicator but the presence of the wrong one. "Forsake me not when my strength is spent" is the cry of one in danger who knows his own need and does not rush to meet it in his own strength. This is my model.

What, then, is an appropriate response to such a severe mercy from the Lord? Lord willing, my response should be one of faith, characterized by confidence and hope. He will revive me again. Will my life look exactly like it did before? Will my body look like it did before? These questions are not answered for me by the Psalm, but they are rendered penultimate by the knowledge that the Lord will bring me up again, even from the depths of the earth. The one who created my life and my body is welcome to recreate it; in fact, he has already promised to do so in the image of His Son, Jesus Christ!

Remember Christ upon the cross and burdens upon believing shoulders, and know that the Lord does not forsake His own.