Skip to main content

Put Your Hope In God


Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.  (Psalm 42:5)

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

        Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law. (Proverbs 29:18)

          Before the first passage shared above, and between it and the second, there is nothing but woe. God feels a million miles away, and even enemies have noticed. All the author has is the memory of God’s actions in the past and the current feeling of abandonment and oppression. Even so, he tells his soul to buck up, twice. Twice he says to his soul to put its hope in God and proclaims that he will yet praise Him.
          The third passage of the day may not seem connected, but it is because hope is not hope without a vision of a positive future. In other words, hope can only be hope if the possibility of blessing is envisioned. Want another connected word? Joy is the firm belief that one is loved by someone who is capable of overseeing on our behalf, and willing to do so.
          If anyone should have had hope, it should have been the nation of Israel, who saw the plagues against Egypt, the dividing the Red Sea and the Jordan, the miracles in the wilderness, the conquest of the Promised Land. But in Psalm 42, the sons of Korah have to tell their souls twice to put their hope in God.
          It sounds to me as if the bulk of the song is being led by feelings. Life’s tough. God’s gone…. It sounds like the soul has stepped off the cliff that I have faced many times in my life. Having stepped off, one falls into the depths of despair, and have to cross a rugged wilderness and climb a sheer rock wall to escape. There are no pitons or ropes. If you fall, you have to try again, injured.
          And the will speaks up and says, “Hey, come on now, soul, you’re not doing your job!” There are times when the will and the mind must take charge over the feelings, grit and grind their teeth and remember that they are part of the “special forces.”
          And the way to do that is to hold on to the vision, to keep the joy set before us, and to put our hope in Him and not in our circumstances.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think About These Things

                 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8) This passage is a major challenge for me. Like everyone else, I struggle to keep my thoughts from wandering off into the weeds, then wondering what possible benefits those weeds might have… Sigh. But as a writer, I have to delve at least a little into the ignoble, wrong, impure, unlovely, and debased. After all, there’s no story if everything’s just as it should be and everyone’s happy. As Christians, there are times when we need to deal with all the negatives, but that makes it even more important that we practice turning our minds by force of attention to what is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. It’s just too easy to get stuck in a swamp. With my...
1 comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Pure...

            The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (I Timothy 1:5)   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16) I’m probably cheating - or mishandling the Bible, but earlier I was thinking about love being pure and purifying. And hatred being pure and purifying. And anger…joy…patience… fear… jealousy… courage…lust… and other strongly felt feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Today’s verse brings purity and love together, so it’s the verse of the day, but it’s not really the focus. That means my motive for sharing it with you probably isn’t pure. As you read through my list, you   probably thought, “Yeah” about some, and “What’s she on?” about others. But consider how much hatred, a...
Post a Comment
Read more