How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? (Psalm 13:2, NIV 1984)
Every golfer knows that our game is one of vagaries. That is, the one thing we can count on is that we can count on nothing.
Today’s good turns to tomorrow’s bad. Ask any one of the several Saturday night leaders who have let a trophy slip away this season on the PGA Tour. “The game giveth and the game taketh away,” any Bible-borrower might say of golf.
But truthfully, life is the same.
In Psalm 13, David lamented the sorrows of his days and the accompanying sorrows of his heart. This was the same David who wrote in Psalm 6, “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when [my naysayers’] grain and new wine abound.”
And it’s not just Old Testament literature. In his letter, James managed to write that we should “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds,” but also that we should “grieve, mourn and wail,” changing “your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” To the Corinthians, Paul lauded godly sorrow, declaring that it produced earnestness, eagerness, indignation, concern, and readiness to see justice done.
What gives? Are God’s people to fall into moodiness, wandering without an anchor? Not at all! It is life that brings vicissitudes. And in the midst of that, we are allowed to respond accordingly. Indeed, we should worry if we have no depth of feeling, for love and mercy are found in such places—and these are expressions God wants very much for us to learn and employ.
But here is what must not give: our praise of the one who has made us to feel so deeply. As David moved to the close of Psalm 13, he set his troubles aside, not for some mustered joy against the dark moment, but for God himself: “I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”
Don’t fear trouble or sorrow. Fear the time when these things—as well as joy and satisfaction—do not prompt you to turn to the Lord in praise of his relentless faithfulness.
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Jeff Hopper
March 14, 2012
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