Hello Everyone
The broad shoulders of God. Psalm 55:22. As Christians, we live our lives between two poles of reality. The first pole is the sovereignty of God who rules over everything and the second pole is the existence of life’s difficulties. We know that God is sovereign, good, faithful and able. Yet we also know that life has seasons of hardship when grief thrusts its piercing dagger into our lives and we desperately pray for God’s immediate intervention. If God doesn’t act within our timeframe, we can be left feeling disappointed, anxious and ruffled. We struggle! On the one hand we want to trust our God because we know He is everything He claims to be. Yet on the other hand, we battle with the pain of circumstances and wonder why God doesn’t always immediately rescue us from our greatest heartaches and fears. It is at this crossroad we are reminded of the broad shoulders of God and His invitation for us to lament or to honestly cry out to Him as we try to reconcile these two realities. The broad shoulders of God are where we wrestle, assured He won’t abandon us and confident that it is on God’s broad shoulders He also carries us in crisis, and often in ways we will never fully grasp. He is always warring on our behalf.
As we go to the Psalms, we find our voices echoed in the numerous lament Psalms. We see that the broad shoulders of God, spread wide before our humanity is where He invites us to lay our burdens down. When we are wrestling and thrashing in the ashes of difficulty and we want to yell and scream about our pain to God because He hasn’t yet met our expectations and we lack understanding, God leans down into our mess and gives us permission to fire off our questions, release our bitter cries, plead for His help, rest in His arms, and trust Him in the dark until He turns on the light. He kindly invites us to enter the courtrooms of His Kingdom where He graciously allows us to put Him in the dock, permitting us to cross-examine Him as to why He hasn’t acted the way we want. Yet at no point does He silence us or call for the angelic bailiffs to take us into custody. No question we ask will take Him by surprise. He knows we want to trust Him, but He also knows every anxious thought that puts us in a tailspin. The broad shoulders of God enable us to safely grow in faith.
It is for our benefit that we get to rest and lament on the broad shoulders of God. Lament is not about wading around in the tainted wells of our troubles or lingering in the shadows of suffering. Rather, lament is the way we draw close to our Father, laying our complaints before Him but still trusting He is no less God because He hasn’t yet answered. God will always answer, but His answer will be in His perfect timing and for maximum benefit. As we give Him our burdens and lament, He bears our grief and reminds us the broad shoulders of God are always strong and will never grow weary.
So, friends, get on “God’s broad shoulders” today.
Best days to come.
Wen