Psalm 10

If you've been wondering if I've been slacking, I have been.  I went back to work this week and I have not mastered fitting this devotion time into a work day.  I need to find a way to take some time away without feeling like I'm missing precious time with my family.  Ideas?

Anyways, on to Psalm 10.  The very first verse grabbed my attention.  It says, "Why, Lord, do you stand far off?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?"  This is exactly what I have been trying to put into words for the past several months.  In some of the previous posts, I have mentioned feeling "abandoned" or "deserted" by God, always being clear that I knew all along that God would never desert me.  However, describing God as being standoffish seems to be a pretty good description without going against any truths I know about God.  So, why did it feel like he was hiding himself from me in the times I was most troubled?  I wish I had an answer, but I don't - and the rest of Psalm 10 doesn't seem to help.

I have a hard time finding a way to relate to the rest of the psalm if I'm being honest.  Verses 2 through 11 talk about what the wicked do and who they are.  Verses 12 through 15 tell God to hold the wicked accountable.  Then, verses 16 through 18 show conviction that God will indeed defend the helpless.  I know there is wicked in the world everywhere, but I also don't think "wickedness" is what has made me feel like God is standing "far off."  I feel like I've been battling difficult circumstances, not wicked people.  It just doesn't seem to speak to where I am.

It's disappointing to get to Psalm 10 and not really feel a connection to it, especially since Psalms 1 through 9 have seemed so relevant to what I've been going through.  I don't know if I'm just not looking hard enough or if there really is not much to connect with, but it's still discouraging.  

The whole reason I started reading the Psalms was to feel like God wasn't actually so "far off" and, in Psalm 10, I find a verse that completely summarizes how I have been feeling.  But, just like nearly every effort I have made in the past few years, being able to verbalize the issue has gotten me no closer to any sort of answer.  I still feel like God is hiding from me and I don't know why.  And the Psalmist doesn't give an answer, either.

Psalm 1

To start, I'm going to go back through all the Psalms again, starting with Psalm 1.  Some of the things I mention will be things that stuck out to me the first time I read through it, way back in January.  To give some perspective, in January we had four kids, two were ours and two were foster children so close in age to our own they might as well have been two sets of twins.  Needless to say, during this time I was not looking at anything through a lens of peace, but through one of chaos and struggle a lot of times.


I looked at Psalm 1 with two translations, NIV and The Message, the NIV because it's what I'm used to and The Message because it's different.  One thing stands out in the NIV that doesn't in The Message and that is the first two verses.  Psalm 1:1 says,  


¹ Blessed is the one 
   who does not walk in step with the wicked 
or stand in the way that sinners take 
   or sit in the company of mockers...

To me, this verse represents a progression.  First comes walking in step with the wicked.  When walking, it's easy to alter your course to avoid sin, but it's also easy to keep your momentum going and not even notice that you're following sin.  If you take the analogy one step further, you get standing in sin.  This is a choice: recognizing that you are in sin and choosing to stay there.  One step more and you are sitting in sin: a decision not only to stay in sin, but also to make yourself comfortable in in.  

My purpose in reading the Psalms, though, is not simply to understand things intellectually and come away with more knowledge to store away.  I'm at a point in my faith where intellectual knowledge alone is not enough.  So, when I read that verse more carefully, I see myself in it.  It's hard at first to classify myself as "wicked," but I see the truth in it when I consider the progression of the past five or so years of my life. 

First, I started wandering from God, a little bit here and there, but always coming back to Him.  This isn't the type of wandering you may be thinking.  On the outside, my life didn't change.  Anyone looking at me from a worldly perspective wouldn't have seen me doing anything wrong.  But, because of the circumstances of my life, I began closing my heart off to God, one little piece at a time.  Over time, when I would turn back to Him, I would keep more and more of those closed-off sections to myself.  

Eventually, my wanderings became longer.  It would be months before I would actually turn my heart back toward God again and when I did, I was holding back.  It's not so much that I made a choice to stand away from God, but I did make choices to not turn back to Him.  There were many specific times when I felt God tugging at my heart a little, but instead of turning back, I would choose to stand my ground, keeping myself separated from Him.  There are too many reasons for why I did this to go into detail, but at the core of all my reasons was that I was wounded and blamed God for much of it.  

After a while, I became comfortable with my life the way it was and noticed God even less than before.  I still don't know if it's because I wasn't ready to hear or if God really was leaving me to my own devices, but suffice it to say that God felt more distant than He ever had - at a time when I needed Him the most.  

Looking back, I can see that I caused the great chasm between myself and my Lord, but I still experience anger and bitterness.  I made a series of decisions that put an increasing amount of space between myself and God.  Of course, the space crescendoed to a point where, when I finally felt the need to call out to God because of my circumstances, all I felt was a resounding, deafening silence.  After all my time avoiding God, it felt like he was intentionally avoiding me.

To be perfectly honest, I still feel that way about God much of the time.  I grew up in church, so I know all the verses about how God won't abandon us and how He won't give us more than we can handle.  While intellectually I know the truth in those verses, right now, sometimes hearing those verses almost make me want to physically cringe.  I'm not trying to offend anyone and I definitely am not headed down the path to renouncing my faith.  Quite the opposite, I think I'm finally starting the journey towards real faith rather than a superficially easy faith: a transition from the theoretical the the deeply meaningful.  And I don't think God intends that transition to be easy.