“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
From the words of my groaning?”
Psalm 22:1
Does your heart ever cry these words? Scream them? Bleed them?
My does. All the time these days. I wish it wasn’t so. I was hoping to start the year off with renewed confidence and assurance of God’s love and faithfulness.
Inside, I find myself growing angry and desperate as I feel more and more isolated from God. I feel abandoned. I feel beat down. I feel broken. I feel like the pot that slipped from the Potter’s hand and was swept into a corner. Forgotten.
Perhaps you do too.
Perhaps, you won’t feel scandalised if I - can you keep a secret? Lean in close, I’ll whisper it to you. The secret guilt that’s been gnawing at my heart.
I feel betrayed by God.
There. It’s said.
I feel betrayed.
Perhaps you’ve felt that too?
And my attention gets drawn to passages of promise for renewal and comfort. To the truth of the Cross and the reminder of God’s love in saving me from my sins. And they are meant to comfort me. To encourage me. To strengthen me.
But, the truth is, they are of little comfort. They seem cold and impersonal. Proof only that God cares for the state of our souls, not for me, personally. Not for me as I struggle with depression. Not for me as I battle with depression. Not for me as I face the possibility of chronic fatigue. Not for me as I struggle to make sense of the tatters of my life. Not for me as I struggle to figure out what I’m supposed to do now. Not for me who sees no end to the struggle other than death.
And where does one find hope in all this? How does one feel it?
But then, maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Because maybe hope isn’t actually a feeling. Maybe it’s a verb. A choice. A choice to believe the promises of renewal and comfort. A choice to believe in the unfailing love of God. A choice to not give up.
And the Bible does promise us that God cares. That God loves us. That God will renew us. Psalm 22 continues:
“For He has not despised or abhorred
The affliction of the afflicted,
And He has not hidden His face from him,
But has heard, when he cried out to Him…
The Afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek Him shall praise the Lord.”
Psalm 22: 24, 26
And perhaps, maybe, hope really is a verb. And sure, maybe I can’t practice my hope in God in any bold or significant way. But maybe, just maybe, choosing to face another hour, another day of this beat down, messed up life, is act of hope enough.
