Psalm 119:50 – Experience

This is my comfort when I’m afflicted:
Your word to me has given me life.

What do you hold onto when living through difficult times?

During times of great difficulty, theological conclusions, no matter how well thought out and firmly held, can let you down. It’s very difficult to continue believing in a God of love, when that love is not evident.

I know this from experience. When our son James was dying of cancer, Jody and I had plenty of teaching to rely on. We were both teachers in the church who had taught weekend seminars on prayer. We had plenty of stuff in our heads. We did not teach that God always resolves problems in the way that we would prefer. If you’ve read Job, you can understand that God may call on you to remain a witness when things look as dark as possible.

So what did sustain us?

Our experience with God, experience that gave reality to what we had learned and what we taught. We knew that God could act, because we had experienced this. We also knew that the result might not be what we preferred, because we had the experience of the church and our own experience that matched again with what we taught.

But even more, living through the experience required a continued sense of God’s presence, and a continued conversation with God. Knowledge could fail us. Friends could fail us. We could feel alone, beset on every side. But when we would spend time with God, when we would listen for the still small voice (KJV) or the sound of sheer silence (NRSV), a quietness in which you know God is there, we could find the strength to sustain us.

Our comfort in our affliction was that God, through God’s powerful, creative Word, gave us life, sustained that life, and held that life in Divine care.

How can you experience God’s comforting and empowering presence today?

(Featured image is from Adobe Stock by By Romolo Tavani. Licensed. Not public domain.)