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In Christ, Mark
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
In Christ, Mark
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send me Your light and Your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to the place where You dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise You with the lyre, O God, my God.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 43
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Have you ever been left in the dark?
It can be tough as we try to find our way around with no light. We find ourselves unable to see, unable to safely get from one point to another, and unable to read anything. Ever try reading in a dark place? It doesn’t work too well.
Yes, being left in the dark isn’t fun. We don’t know how much we rely on light until it is gone. And once in the dark, we find ourselves longing for the light to return so we can see again and get things back to normal.
Up to this point, I have been talking about light from a physical perspective. But we can also find ourselves in the dark spiritually as well. Life has a way of bringing difficulties upon us that can seem to thrust us into dark places, places where we find it difficult to see light if we can even see it at all. Maybe you have been or are currently in one of these dark places in life. I know I have.
I remember well when my first marriage ended. I had been deceived and abandoned, left alone and without a family. All that I had in my life short of my career was gone. I was hurt beyond belief and the emotional pain I had to endure every day was maddening. It seemed like there was no light in my life. Only a deep darkness I couldn’t escape from.
I think David could relate to what I was feeling. He wasn’t faced with divorce but he certainly was up against plenty of terrible adversity in the way of opponents to his throne who wished him dead. We get a sense of David’s state of mind in the 43rd Psalm as he wrote:
Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send me Your light and Your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to the place where You dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise You with the lyre, O God, my God.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.
David was up against the deceitful and wicked who threatened him to the point of oppressing his spirit. In a state of mourning, David’s soul was downcast and disturbed. Everything was dark in his life.
But thanks be to God that David realized what he needed and shared it with us. He just didn’t cry out to God from his darkness and leave it at that. No, he asked God for light, not just any light but God’s light, the light that David knew could deliver him from his darkness and into God’s faithful care, to the place where God dwelled, to a place where David would praise and worship God.
Friends, we will find ourselves in dark times in life. It will happen. We’ll be oppressed by our circumstances and yearn for deliverance as David did.
And when we find ourselves there, we should follow David’s lead in this psalm and ask for the Lord to send us what we need most in the midst of our darkness. We should ask for Him to send us His light, the light that illuminates the path to His care - and to the rest and peace and comfort we can only find in His arms.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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