Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Devotion 3.2.17

Suffering - Psalm 77

Social media, the broad category that has become established in our world, has brought an abundance of changes in our lives that we are still sorting through.  When we thought the internet and email created an immediacy to information, we had no idea we were still in the formative era known as the Information Era, because androids and iPhones have delivered instant information to us so rapidly that it is disruptive.  We are learning how to drive watching for distracted drivers who are on their cells messaging.  We are learning how to deliver  lessons in the classrooms as students successfully navigate social media when we are trying to eliminate such distractions.  I've even seen it in court rooms, where jurors are asked to check the cell at the door. 

This recent phenomenon has its pluses and minuses.  One plus side is we have learned how to let people we know, our "friends" on our different social media sites, what is going on in our lives.  This can be of value as we learn of the joys and the hurts in our friends lives, even from a distance.  Yet I have found the platform inadequate for words when someone is truly suffering.  Hard to express in sincere terms our thoughts and certainly we cannot use symbols, or emoticons/emojis to put into words thoughts that are best expressed in words.

There is nothing worse than seeing someone or something suffer.  Suffering can be caused from actual physical pain that's immediate or pain that is chronic, caused by disease, our own or that of a loved one.  We can also have mental suffering which is difficult as we see someone we love or know with depression or other issues trying to cope with them.  We also have our own anguish as we watch  a loved one having problems that can run the spectrum of mental and physical issues.   We have all experienced it or will, and it never grows easier to deal with when it arises.

We hear David's anguish in Psalm 77:  "I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me; In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearing; my soul refuses to be comforted.  When I remember God, I moan;  when I meditate, my spirit faints." (1 - 3)  The psalms of David's are referred to as Psalms of Lament.  We lament in our time of suffering or that of a loved one.  God, hear our plea, hear our needs.  God, do you hear me?

David cries out to God, and he does so to the point of exhaustion.  Yet he never stops doing so because he knows God will hear him.  We remember that God, too, experienced loss.  We take our suffering to Christ who we know listens, and whose own suffering, death, and resurrection will ultimately deliver us from this earthly suffering we experience into an everlasting life with him.

Hope Men's Ministry


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