Hello. I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Do you ever have sleepless nights, lying awake and worrying about everything that’s going wrong? In Psalm 77, the poet recounts his sleepless night, full of worry and distress and desperate cries to God for help. 

He tells us three things he remembered that night. 

First, he says, “I remembered you, God, and I groaned.” No comfort there! He complains to God,
    You kept me from falling asleep,
      I was too troubled to speak (v. 3). 

Thinking about God only increased the poet’s discomfort and distress. Was God present and helpful in his sleepless night? No. Did God sooth his anxiety and send him sleep? No. It seemed to the poet that God was part of the problem, not part of the solution. All the poet could do was lie in bed and groan.

The second thing the poet remembers is when he used to sing songs in the night (v. 6). Night was not always a terror to him. He remembers a singing God’s praises at night. Back then, God was near, he warmed the poet’s heart and lifted his spirits. But that’s not happening any more. Instead of finding comfort in those happy memories, the poet uses them as fuel for despair, asking:
    Will the Lord now reject for ever?
        Will he never show his favour again?
      Has his unfailing love vanished completely?
        Has his promise failed for all time? (vv. 7-8).

Like the poet, how we use good memories is a choice. We can use them to praise the “good old days” and to complain that it’s not so good today. We can remember amazing answers to prayer, and resent God’s silence and absence today.  We can remember loving fellowship with God, and become bitter that he ignores us now. 

The poet soon tires of asking unanswerable questions about where God disappeared to, and he moves on to the third thing he remembers. He says,
    Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:
      the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
    I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
      yes, I will remember his miracles of long ago.” 

Then he recounts how God freed Israel from Egypt, how he parted the Red Sea to save them from Pharaoh’s army, and how he gave them the ten commandments at Mt. Sinai with powerful signs of thunder and lightning.  

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we often use our memories in the same way the poet used his. 

Sometimes when we lie sleepless at night, we groan when we wonder why you don’t do more about evil. Why are our lives so anxious. Why our health fails. Why those we love are in danger.

Sometimes even the memory of past joys feeds present despair. We remember when we loved to pray, when newfound faith filled us with joy, when hope lifted us out of depression, when we fell in love with you. But where are you now, God? The night is dark, and you do not light it up. It is filled with oppressive silence, and you do not speak. Have you forgotten that you love us? Have you rejected us forever? 

And finally, with the poet, we choose a different way of responding to our memories. We choose to use them as building blocks of hope. We remember the dry summers when you sent rain, and we trust you will do that again. We remember the gladness we had in hearing your word, and we trust you will speak to us again. We remember your power helping us conquer sin and sickness, and we trust you to bring us through this long night of despair. 

With the poet we remember that:
    You led your people like a flock,
      by the hand of Moses and Aaron (v. 20). 

Yes, God, you are a shepherd. We are the flock. Be our shepherd in the long dark nights of our lives.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello. I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Psalm 76 is a hymn of praise to God, the great warrior. Today, instead of following the poet into a prayer that asks God to be our warrior, let’s reflect on the topic of war as the Bible presents it.

The theme of killing to solve relationship problems surfaces in the first book of the Bible. After Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, they had two sons. Cain, the elder, felt God was showing favoritism to Abel, his younger brother. Cain’s solution was to kill Abel. Today, individuals and nations still use this approach to address difficult relationships. 

Much of the Old Testament details the Israelite conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land. The Bible describes the conquest not as a “holy war” or “genocide”, but as a “divine war”, in which God demonstrates his power against false and evil gods to establish worship of the one true God. This is why the psalms celebrate God’s victory over evil and idolatry, and urge God into further battles. (See Thomas, Heath. The Old Testament, “Holy War” and Christian Morality. Blog post, 21 November 2011 at https://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/the-old-testament-holy-war-and-christian-morality/).

But when God’s chosen nation, Israel, fell into idolatry, God showed that he is no respecter of nations. He sent  warring nations against Israel to expose and correct their errors. And what of Israel today? Does God protect them as his chosen nation? Or is Israel balanced on a sharp edge of violence and corrupt politics, as their ancestors were when God decreed the Babylonian exile? 

In the New Testament, Jesus and Paul are realists about war. The Israel they lived in was conquered and occupied by Rome. Using a battle metaphor, Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mat 10:34), and he predicted a future filled with “wars and rumors of wars” (Mat 24:6). Paul told Timothy to “fight the battle well” (1 Tim 1:18). In the book of Revelation, John had a vision of “divine war” at Armageddon at the end of time, when God will attack and destroy the enemies of his persecuted and oppressed people (Revelation 16).

I make three comments on war in the Bible

1. First, wars and killing are pervasive in biblical stories and imagery. Just as they are in human history, for as long as people have written their stories and painted pictures on the walls of caves.
   
2. Second God is present and active in human history, including wars. We’re fortunate that he doesn’t abandon us when things get messy and violent.
   
3. Third, I find it helpful to interpret my life using metaphors of war. There are Goliaths within I must kill–hate and lies and envy. There are enemies in the world we must fight–injustice, poverty, and ignorance. Whether the psalms speak literally or metaphorically of war, they paint a true picture of the life we live and the God we serve.

Let’s pray, using some of the images from Psalm 76. 

    O God, you are radiant with light,
        more majestic than mountains rich with game.
    The valiant lie plundered,
        they sleep their last sleep;
    not one of the warriors
        can lift his hand.
    At your rebuke, God of Jacob,
        both horse and chariot lie still (vv. 4-6). 

O God, we have caught a vision of your radiant light, more majestic than mountains. As we journey, stumbling in darkness toward this vision, we encounter enemies everywhere. The world and our own hearts are rampant with prejudice, with lust, with pettiness and anger. As you waged divine war on behalf of Israel, so wage divine war in our lives. Lay waste the enemies of our souls, rebuke  them until horse and chariot lie still, until evil sleeps its last sleep. 

  You, God rose up to judge,
    to save all the afflicted of the land.
  Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise,
    and the survivors of your wrath are restrained.

You are a God to be feared and obeyed, because nothing stops your plan to bring righteousness and justice and peace. The violent will be deposed, the unjust punished, and the wicked rebuked. O God, cleanse us from unrighteousness, purge the violence from our hearts, that we may greet you with joy and not with fear when you come. 

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.