O Cast Your Burden Upon the Lord

There are some seasons of life when I just cannot seem to get a full night of sleep. It has been that way for years, and I know that I am not alone in this. Spending time with members of Christ Church throughout the week, I am reminded that when peace of mind is hard to find, restful sleep usually eludes us as well. One of the first pieces of advice I offer to parishioners who struggle with sleeping because of something difficult in their life is to immerse themselves in the Psalms during the darkest hours of the night when restful sleep is hard to find.

Any honest priest will tell you that all of the sermons, advice, counsel, and prayers they pray for others are really sermons, advice, counsel, and prayers that he or she especially needs. When I give this particular piece of advice about being in the Psalms, I am mostly giving it to myself. Never have I had an emotion so original that it was not expressed in the Psalms. Never have I felt a deeper pain than those found in the Psalms. Never have I found such freedom for honest dialogue with God than the laments of God’s people in the Psalms. The room for expression in the Psalms is uncomfortable to our modern sensibilities. The Psalmist makes requests that are difficult for us to hear: blot them out, hurt them as they have hurt me, and so on. The Psalmist provokes God to action asking, can you not see what is going on? Are you drunk, or just sleeping? When will you wake up and do something? As hard as it is to process such requests and provocations that are present in Holy Scripture, we recognize that they are there, and in so doing, we acknowledge the freedom we have to approach God.

In the middle of hard seasons in life that arise for reasons both inside of our control and outside of our control, we find in the Psalms a guide for approaching God. God does not need us to be in a pious, saintly, meek-and-mild mindset for us to be heard. Tell God exactly what you feel, and give him the anxieties, confusions, pains, and difficulties that confront you. Essential to God’s character is the truth that He, in Jesus Christ, has decisively proven to be God-with-us in the midst of our pain and suffering, all on our behalf. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see that God can take the worst that human beings have to offer God in response to His love, death itself, and turn it into new life. Not only is this so, but this very same new life is then given back to those who tried to take His. So, just as the Psalmists do, give God your worst in times of great difficulty. He can take it.

In Christ,

Matt Rucker

 

Artwork: “King David Playing the Harp” – Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1616 and completed by Jan Boeckhorst, c. 1640