Down inside we have a longing for God-what Pascal called "the vacuum which God left behind."
- Billy Graham
Psalms in the Night…
With so many wonderful Biblical promises and powerful examples of God's interaction with mankind, see Psalms of Delight, Psalms in the Night are a way of exploring and sharing some of the difficult and challenging thoughts, feelings and experiences God's people encounter while endeavoring to fully enjoy His presence and power, protection and provision. In ever more genuine and meaningful ways. For themselves and their children, family and friends.
Psalms in the Night are written in concert with Psalms of Delight. Both series contain Modern Psalms meant to comfort and inspire those seeking the Omni-God revealed in Scripture.
Missing You Summary
Amidst the duties and distractions of modern life there is a backdrop of longing felt by humanity as a whole. Often marginalized or denied, mankind is made in the image our Creator. As such, we long to know and be filled with the glory of His presence. While not in vogue, groaning for God is a time honored tradition. One well documented and practiced by the best of His people. Exploring our desire for more of God is not only a sincere form of prayer and praise but therapeutic. God seeks to be worshipped in spirit and truth. The honest though often buried truth is, we miss Him more than words can say.
Missing You
Modern Psalm in the Night 17
We don't talk about it much but I know humanity misses You. Of course we don't think about in those words. How can a person miss Someone they've never met? Unless hints of that Person's goodness and glory were within and around us everywhere. From the beauty and promise of sunrise to the rainbow hues of sunset. From to the wonder and romance of a brilliant full moon to the silent shimmering of a quadrillion stars.
You designed creation's beauty, as well as it's pains, sorrows and death to draw us to our Creator and Savior. Taken as a whole, life's greatest message is our need to know and experience more of You. Yet our attempts to do just that so often end in frustration. We find an resistance above, about and within, orchestrated by not just by evil but an Evil Him. As a champion of the faith, Florence Nightingale noted as much:
- "Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principal of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening."
Children still ask about You. They wonder aloud the "why" questions we're too tired or disappointed to keep asking. Time strong arms us into growing up and getting over it. Life goes on, even in face of Your silence and the absence of Your presence. We adults make excuses for You. Create religions and denominations, doctrines and philosophies to deal with our disillusionment. We comfort ourselves with hymns and choruses, scriptures and platitudes that speak more to what we wish our relationship with You were than what we experience. Of course there's alway eternity to look forward to. The ends justify the means. Our lives are little more than a fraction of a nano second compared with forever.
Eclipse of the Son
For the Christian it can get a little confusing. You're quite quantum in nature. Some aspects of Your Kingdom are here and others yet to come. You make Yourself available now in certain ways and in others not yet. No respecter of persons, yet with more than 1,400 Biblical "ifs" conditions abound even on Your free gifts, such as salvation and our attempts to reach out to you through prayer and worship. All of which limit our experiencing You.
A condition which, if unchecked, will continue to produce a downward spiral into sins of greater quantity and quality. Already the modern world daily does the unthinkable. As scripture repeatedly warns, the global abortion of over a billion alone is enough to blot out the Son, spiritually eclipsing Your presence and power within the church, impacting our prayers and hastening judgment in time and eternity. Isaiah reveals how being covered in the innocent blood of a thousand million of Your "least brothers" is like digging our own grave, separating us from You:
- "Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil. They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web. Whoever eats their eggs will die, and when one is broken, an adder is hatched. Their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are evil deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood." Isaiah 59:1-7
At times we feel close enough to almost touch You. Awash in Your many blessings, particularly those raining down on the modern world, we rejoice in Your goodness and presence as captured by David in Psalms 139:
"Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? to be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you're there! If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute— you're already there waiting! Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I'm immersed in the light!" It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you." Psalm 139:7-12
Truth be told, times like there are all too rare. If they were the rule and not the exception then personal and corporate prayer, Bible study and service would be on the rise rather than the decline. A healthy and happy church would be converting the world, not the reverse. Still, even times of joy only wet our appetite for You. Sadly, more often than not humanity's billions feel more in tune with the need expressed by Psalm 22:
- "God, God...my God! Why did you dump me miles from nowhere? Doubled up with pain, I call to God all the day long. No answer. Nothing. I keep at it all night, tossing and turning. And you! Are you indifferent, above it all, leaning back on the cushions of Israel's praise? We know you were there for our parents: they cried for your help and you gave it; they trusted and lived a good life. And here I am, a nothing—an earthworm, something to step on, to squash. Everyone pokes fun at me; they make faces at me, they shake their heads: "Let's see how God handles this one; since God likes him so much, let him help him!" And to think you were midwife at my birth, setting me at my mother's breasts! When I left the womb you cradled me; since the moment of birth you've been my God. Then you moved far away and trouble moved in next door. I need a neighbor." Psalm 22:1-11 MSG
But much has changed in two thousand years. Like the Wedding Feast were Jesus performed His first recorded miracle, we seen to be out of wine. Like Mary, true intercessors wrestle with You, to turn the water to wine. Encouraged that prayer can change things, we hope against hope, not taking no for an answer as we dare to dream that once again "You've saved the best for last."
Like countless billions before me I groan to know You better. Teach us how to approach You. With Hell to loose and Heaven to gain there's no time like the present. We long for You to respond to our seeking You. Hear and answer us as we ask, seek and knock. Please rend the Heavens and come down. Remember how heavenly time and eternity weigh on all Your creation:
- "For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us." Romans 8:22-23
- "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." Romans 8:26-27
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