5-26-2022

  Good Morning!    

     Psalm 13:1; “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

    We can add another to the list. Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and now Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. It is sad that cities like this are now going to be remembered for violence and murder. While we have had a string of deadly shootings, it is when children lose their lives that we are most haunted and most grieved. There will be calls for action, calls for justice. The talking empty heads will point their fingers in self-righteous anger at which ever person or group of people they want to vilify and accuse them. Unfortunately, rational talking will not happen just the shrill voice of the mediocre and the pontifications of the ill-informed.

      Yet deep within our hearts, the voice of the faithful cry out to God, “How long? How long will this evil continue? How long, O Lord, how long?” It seems like evil is winning these days. Hatred, anger, vitriol, and divisiveness seem to be the current manner of speech and action. Yet we need to continually return to God’s Word for our hope. For while it seems that the bad guys are winning, they are not. Jesus still reigns. This truth should never leave us. The devil and the world will always try and cloud this from us and it is events like this that cause us to question, that cause us to worry, that cause us to cry, “How long?”

    We need to remember we live in a time when the glory and mercy of God has been reveled to us in the face of Jesus. Yet the ways of God are often times incomprehensible to us in this world and foreign to the world. The world and our sinful nature hates. It despises, it lusts, and it seeks to replace God with a pretender on the throne. So, we as believers experience the dichotomy of both sorrow and joy existing in our hearts at the same time. We know the joy of salvation, yet we experience the pain of a sinful broken world. We often feel like God has abandoned us because we do not understand.

    Yet God does not call us to understand, He calls us to live by faith. Even when we feel abandoned, we are not. God speaks to us through His Word and Spirit and even when we cry out in our sorrow, “How long?” We can also confidently pray like Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Cor. 1:3&4).

    As people of faith, we continue to pray, “How long, O Lord, how long?” But we pray with the confidence of the hope of the resurrection that God has and will deal with us bountifully. His mercy endures forever.

Father, our cry of how long ascends to You as we seek Your comfort at this time. Help us to trust in Your eternal love and mercy. And while we see things, we cannot comprehend help us to find comfort in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Send us Your Spirit of hope that we may ever cling to You. In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret