Freedom in tension
Monday, March 13, 2017
This is the fifth of seven blog posts that re-imagine Psalm 73 as journal entries.
If you want the whole story in one go, download the "book" or listen to the sermon.
This is Asaph's story. This is our story.
If you want the whole story in one go, download the "book" or listen to the sermon.
This is Asaph's story. This is our story.
M A R C H 1 / / Psalm 73:18-20
It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get my head around it, to start to understand what your plan is God.
Surely – and I’m not using that word lightly, I am certain –
surely you have plans for the evil, arrogant, liars of this world.
You have plans for the cheaters, the selfish and the greedy.
I don’t know when, but I trust judgement is coming.
The rich will be poor, the famous will be nobodies;
those with everything in this world will end up with nothing.
They’re the ones on the real slippery ground.
I can remember a summer holiday when I was about 10, racing my brother along the sand.
I was winning, my feet skipping across the surface. And then suddenly, my legs collapsed below me.
I had stepped in a giant hole that I’d dug myself, earlier in the day.
I was the architect of my own downfall. My brother sprinted past.
Victory… turned to loss in an instant.
Judgement will be sudden and complete when it comes,
when Jesus comes back.
And then these dark days will seem like a dream. Everything will be different and the struggles of this life will fade into insignificance.
It will be sudden, it will be complete.
M A R C H 2 / / Psalm 73:21-22
Yesterday’s realisation was that I’m living in the tension between what God has done, and what he will finally do. Jesus’ kingdom is here and is still to come.
I had lost sight of the bigger picture.
Seeing the injustice in this world rocked me to the core.
Grief and bitterness were like a stabbing pain in my heart, in my soul…
a sucker punch to the kidneys.
But I behaved a bit like one of the kids on the website – “reasons my child is crying.”
When you can’t see the bigger picture, you end up crying about something comparatively insignificant.
Reasons my child is crying - I can’t fix his broken biscuit.
Reasons my child is crying - I won’t let her wear dirty underpants as a hat.
Or you throw a tantrum because you can’t wait.
Reasons my child is crying – the microwave ate his lunch.
God, I’m sorry I took it out on you.
It's hard to wait for the right time,
to discern what is wise,
or to see the big picture.
But without waiting, discerning or seeing it's even harder to make sense of the world we're in and our place in it. There will still be tension between what we hope for and what we experience, but it will be a tension we understand; a tension that frees us to live.
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