Does God Sleep and Forget Us?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
9 I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
David is in a bad spot. These verses all tell us that David is in a place of feeling abandoned, forsaken, attacked and alone. These verses are probably in the context of Saul pursuing him. Or, it could be when his son Absolom tried to overflow his kingdom. If we were to read only these verses we might be inclined to answer the above question, that, yes, God does sleep and slumber and neglects to care for us. Yet, we also have this verse, found in Psalms:
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
We do not have a contradiction of Scripture here. What we have is the reality of feelings in the light of Biblical truth. David is being pursued. He “feels” as though God has rejected him and abandoned him. Yet, just because we feel it does not make it true. God does not expect us to NOT feel. We will feel what our bodies feel. On the cross Jesus felt pain and sorrow. In the garden he prayed that this bitter cup would be removed and he would not have to drink death. Feelings are part of what we are as God’s created imagers. Yet, we can’t allow our feelings to capture our doctrine, our truth. We live in the world where feelings run people’s thoughts, hearts, minds and mouths. Yet, God wants us to remember His truth. This is why, along with the above verses, states the following in this song:
4 These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
6 and my God.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
David forced his mind to remember the great things of God and about God and what God has already done for him. That work in the mind balanced and even cleared the work of the feelings. Feelings and emotion are real. They are as real as anything else we have in our lives. But, we ought not to allow them to be the rudder of our lives. They do not chart our course. They make the path we are on enjoyable or difficult, but they don’t change the truth that God has not, will not and cannot fall asleep on our problems. His character will not allow that, even if our feelings want to cause us to think it.
No comments:
Post a Comment