Dear Faith Family,
Have you ever struggled with the difference between what you believe is true and what you observe to be true? If so, you're not alone. In fact, if we are honest, as honest as the psalmist of Psalm 73, we could freely admit that living by faith in Jesus, in the way of Jesus, sometimes feels like the wrong way to live. Especially as we look around at what is required to obtain the good of life.
The truth is, we all experience the disconnect between what we confess and what we can see. Between the confession "Truly God is good to His people, those whose hearts are singularly focused on Him" (Ps. 73:1) and the evident "prosperity of the self-interested" (Ps. 73:3).
Our problem is that we are not always comfortable enough with God or one another to be as honest as the psalmist. Rather than admitting our struggle of faith, we press on in the obligations of faith, growing embittered and brutish towards God and others (Ps. 73:21-22) as the Word and the world appear to line up less and less. Or, we put faith to the side, pulling it out when we need to be comforted but not employing it for any practical use (Ps. 73:10-11). But embittered religion or apathetic acculturation are not our only options. There is another way through the struggles of faith.
Psalm 73 is a post-Easter psalm. Like you and I today, the psalmist has pilgrimaged through the valley of death's shadows and is ready for the new life, a different world on the other side in "the dwelling of the LORD" (Ps. 23). And like us, the psalmist has discovered that the promised land of resurrection doesn't look all that different!
But unlike us, the psalmist neither begrudgingly holds to belief nor pragmatically sets it aside; rather, the psalmist wrestles...with God!
The candidness of the psalmist is not a wrestle to hold on to faith in important propositions but rather a wrestle with the One in whom he has faith. After all, like all psalms, this psalm is a prayer: genuine words spoken to and with an intimate God. The psalmist assumes that the contradictions he observes and feels are only cleared up in communion even while doubting,
"But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I saw the whole picture."
(Ps. 73:16-17)
Instead of denying his doubt or dismissing the practicality of his faith, the psalmist grabbed hold of the only sure thing, God's relationship/presence with him. And, like his forefather Jacob (see Gen. 32), the psalmist discovered that wrestling with God clears up faith's sight :
"Nevertheless, I am continually with You...You hold my right hand...You guide me with Your counsel...You receive me to glory...
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion, the one who does friendship forever."
(Ps. 73:23-26)
So faith family, as we continue into the Easter lands, "the land of the living" (Ps. 116:9), and encounter the struggles of faith, let us live up to our namesake, and be ones who "wrestle with God...and who prevail" (Gen. 32:28), so that we too might "see God face to face" (Gen. 32:30).
Love you, faith family! God bless.