You’re Not Forgotten

“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved. But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me” (Psm. 13). Sometimes it just comes down to that. David was one of God’s most beloved souls of all time, yet he knew times of despair and painful waiting that appeared as though it would go on forever; as is evidenced in the opening line of this Psalm. He felt forgotten, and he didn’t feel that he was going to be remembered; though faith knew he would be, as is evidenced in the close of the Psalm. This wasn’t the only time that he felt that way either: “Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long?” (Psm. 6:2,3). Yes, that is always the question: “How long?” Every faithful child of God will find themselves in these kinds of circumstances and feelings at times in their walk with the Lord. Indeed there are times that we may find ourselves in that will surely either make us or break us, and that is in fact the test. There are straits that must sometimes be channeled, that can be so devastating that it is difficult to believe that victory can be achieved. We simply must be like David, who said above, “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.” There is just no other hope than to cleave to God’s mercy and hope in his deliverance, live or die. If we are not able to do so, then the demons of despair and death may literally take us out of the picture altogether. Yeah, it can get real serious sometimes, when no light can be seen at the end of the long, dark, and narrow tunnel. Our faith in God’s faithfulness is the only light in the dark places where hope seems foreign, and we simply can’t afford to relinquish that faith or that hope, though it feel very weak. As a song I love so eloquently says, “Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill.”

Micah gave us a declaration of hope for the ages, regarding such times: “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me” (Mic. 7:8). And of course we have the greatest of all the promises of God that we can always fall back on: “for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5,6). Peter let us know that these times of great hardship are both necessary and valuable to us, though we would much rather not deal with them: “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (I Pet. 1:7). Sometimes we know why we have come into such dire straits, and other times we don’t have a clue. We wonder if this could have been prevented, or if that could have been avoided, or if something else could have been done. We can beat ourselves to death feeling that we have brought undue circumstances on ourselves, and in fact we can sometimes know that we have done so. In any event the main objective is for our faith to survive the storm, and for us to come out of it with more faith and love than we had before. It always comes back to the remedy that David stated in our text passage: “But I have trusted in thy mercy.” God is unfathomably merciful, and as the scripture says, “For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men” (Lam. 3:33). His view of our afflictions is not the view that oppressing demons would have us believe, but rather as it is written; “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Psm. 103:13,14). In the end I can only quote the famous saying from Isaiah, which I believe states the hope of our grueling trials better than anything else: “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:29-31). I don’t know about you, but that sure fits me and suits me to a tee. May God be merciful and give us the strength to make it through these kinds of times. Amen.