Enjoy Life, Enjoy God

WHEN GOD DISAPPEARS

March 31, 2009

The great affirmations of faith in the face of adversity and trying times summon us to renewed courage, and triumphant hope: "Praise be the the Lord my Rock...he is my stronghold." But what about times when those cries seemingly go unanswered?

Praise be the the Lord my Rock,
who trains my hands for war,
my fingers for battle.
He is my loving God and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield, in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.
- Psalm 144:1,2 TNIV

Psalm 144 is one of those affirmations of faith. Yet most of us experience times when God disappears. Now what? Back to C.S. Lewis. In The Screwtape Letters, the devil figure teaches one of his demons, "Our cause is never more in doubt than when a Christian continues to trust in God in spite of our greatest attack on the Christian and the apparent abandonment of the Christian by God."

I do not know your circumstances this day. Faith in Christ is great during the good times. But it is never more important than in those trying times when God seems to have disappeared. The Psalmist here gives us a prayer in the face of God's abandonment.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson