The Pope resigned last week. It got a whole lot of media coverage. Apparently he’s quite a big deal in some parts! Amidst the many farewells and speeches, Pope Benedict XVI talked of the times in his greatest hours of need when it felt as though ‘God was asleep’.
The reaction was fascinating. From the couple of journalists that I heard, the response was‘if even the Pope admits to feeling distance between himself and God, what hope do the rest of us have?’ It spoke volumes of the undersatnding of some of us to the relationship between God and man. Any man. Even the ‘vicar of Christ’, a title for the Pope I’d never heard before and, quite honestly, felt pretty strange.
The Pope’s admission is an honest one. I doubt there’s any of us who wouldn’t say that while ‘we know that we know that we know’, sometimes God seems awfully passive. I love that the Pope openly acknowledge that struggle and disconnect and Iwanted to say ’it’s ok mate, we’ve all been there!’
The writer of Psalm 102 is living in that tension. It’s the opening cry of the Psalm: “Hear me, don’t hide your face from me”. In my distress, don’t fall asleep.
There’s plenty of reasons that the psalmist wants God awake and on the job. He’s being hammered on every front.
One of the strange comforts that I gain from 102 is that the writer doesn’t get a nice, neat answer, or a swift resolution and momentous epiphany. All he seems to get is a reminder of God’s sovereignty.
v12 But You, O Lod, are enthroned forever
Lord, I don’t know why I’m not hearing from you. I don’t know where you’ve gone. It seems a good time to talk and you’ve gone quiet. I don’t know why you haven’t intervened, but here’s what I do know: ’It’s all under Your feet. It’s not beyond You, it’s under You’. That’s the declaration and revelation of the psalm writer.
In Jesus, we have the victory. We have freedom. Not some fist-pumping, chest-thumping, positive thinking kind of victory. More than that. Jesus has triumphed over sin and death. All you see, the darkest and the brightest, he has conquered. And we identify with Christ. In His name, we have the victory. As Paul writes in Philippians 3:10, ‘we share in His suffering becoming like him in His death that we might attain the resurrection from the dead in Christ Jesus’.
There’s something bigger going on. That’s the big ‘BUT’ of Psalm 102 (v12). If our identity is in Jesus, our hope is in Him. It’s no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me. All else: dead. To the glory of God.
Yes, I still want instant answers. But my desire for the resolution that Psalm 102 never genuinely provides is only found in the person on work of Jesus. That’s where I find that he never sleeps but always, continually, intercedes for us (Romans 8:34) from a position of power, authority, wisdom and victory…and a jealous and intimate love for His children.