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He Has Been Good To Me.


How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorry in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me. (Psalm 12)
          When troubles come into a life and our vision is restricted to those troubles, maybe a quarter inch around them and the things into which we bump in the darkness of our circumstances it’s easy to not notice God, or anyone else. I’ve written before about my impatience with people who can’t seem to walk faster than a half a mile per hour while I’m trying to get ten errands done in the time it takes to drive from here to there and back without stopping anywhere (if that long.) It’s even tougher when God seems to be moving at about a half a mile per year, or that He’s disappeared from the scene of the crime.  
         I wanted the past couple months to never come. I dreaded taking care of my father the way I am. I prayed that he would die quickly before we reached this point. That’s a natural prayer. Few people look forward to being the lowest of the lowly nurses’ aids. One of the questions I think most caregivers find themselves asking (and feeling guilty for asking) is “How long, Lord?” It’s not just how long will you forget me to do this job, but how long will you leave my loved one to suffer? How long must we wrestle with the thought that maybe he’ll die and be free of suffering – and feel guilty that we look forward to it for ourselves as well?
          As I’ve said before, we are our own worst enemies. We long for salvation from deep pain and hate ourselves for the longing. We try to beat ourselves into being noble models of care-giving perfection, into overcoming our supposed weakness because we are not God, and beat ourselves harder when we fall.  
         We need to pray that God will give light to our eyes to see beyond the quarter inch because if we don’t see further, we die a little inside. It is only as we trust in God’s unfailing love for us, and for those we care for, that we can we can begin to rejoice even though the salvation isn’t here, now. I know I will sing the Lord’s praise, and I do sing it when I get my eyes off my immediate circumstances. He has been good to me, and He is good to me, and He will be good to me, not matter how bad and dark my circumstance may seem to me. I may not see Him, but that doesn’t mean He’s not there, and it is on that that I must focus.

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