Day seventy seven

It's Sunday again, so time for another Bible passage. Psalm 73 today. I cannot remember, and I haven't checked, what I wrote about Psalm 73 on the webpage about "Psalms of Lament". It is a psalm of lament, but in my present condition it is a good one to look at. I used to preach this at New Year services because I thought it was a good way to start the year.

The psalmist begins:

Surely God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me....

I have encountered this kind of thinking when counselling Christians: "I know the theology; I know what the Bible says, but it isn't working for me."

I remember in my first church visiting someone who told me that she believed in God until her dad died. It wasn't that she had been praying for her dad to be healed - she hadn't.

It was just that she expected bad things to happen to other people, not her, and when bad things happened, God couldn't be real.

I have heard similar things from lifelong church members: "Why me?"

The psalmist goes on to say:

I envied the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

The answer I usually give to the question, "Why me?" is: "Why not you? Who did you want it to happen to?"

That is what the psalmist is saying here: I am a follower of God; one of his people. I am suffering; those people who don't follow God should be suffering instead.

They have no struggles;

their bodies are healthy and strong.

They are free from common human burdens;

they are not plagued by human ills.

I used to be free from common human burdens; I have never had the flu. I could eat whatever I wanted. I was healed from a variety of incurable things that all came on me at once.

I haven't got to the stage the psalmist is at, and I hope I never do. But I was emphasising yesterday (I hope you noticed) how self-absorbed we can be when we get something like a toothache. It doesn't matter what anyone else is going through when I am ill. If I ever return to work, in answer to the question: "How are you?'", I intend to answer: Fine!' I have no desire and no plan to be a complainer about my health.

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure

and have washed my hands in innocence.

All day long I have been afflicted,

and every morning brings new punishments.

I have never liked the Prosperity Gospel of the TV evangelists and some Pentecostals. I don't see the connection between holiness and illness. Take a look at John 9: 1-5 for Jesus' view on this. I can identify with:

All day long I have been afflicted,

    and every morning brings new punishments.

If I don't wake up with pain it gets me soon enough. And it stays for the day. And every morning I know it's going to happen again. As I have said in earlier posts, there are some mornings I have been surprised to wake up because the pain was so bad the day before. But I'm still here!

Then the psalmist goes into the sanctuary and he gets a whole new perspective. He sees life from God's point of view. Speaking of those who live for themselves: the atheists; the arrogant, etc:

They are like a dream when one awakes;

when you arise, Lord,

you will despise them as fantasies.

This always reminds me off:

Row row row your boat.

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

Life is but a dream.

I sometimes feel like I am in a dream. Many times I don't feel as though I am fully awake. It's one of the reasons I don't feel fear, stress, or other "normal" feelings: I feel like I'm not really here.

But the idea that this life is all there is and that there is no accountability and no judgement to come - that is the dream that too many people are living. They are, as the saying goes, "Living the dream", but they will, one day, wake up.

C.S. Lewis tells it best for those of us who are following Jesus, in the last chapter of the last book (The Final Battle) of The Chronicles of Narnia:

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this

world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and

the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the

Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever:

in which every chapter is better than the one before.

And so the psalmist finishes with:

But as for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;

I will tell of all your deeds.

So, whatever you may be going through, remember: the best is yet to be!