“My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’ … These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” - Psalm 42
Whether you greet this day as a victory parade or a funeral procession, there is an undeniable heaviness across the land, for we went to sleep as a bitterly divided people and we woke as a bitterly divided people. The Psalms have been called the schoolbook of prayer, and the excerpt above is in the form of lament. The psalmist’s laments give us an avenue to honestly lift our disquietness before God without abandoning our hope. Here, the psalmist lifts a cry of utter despair in the present tempered by the memory of times of exultation in God’s presence. In the end, the psalmist, still acknowledging grief, knows that though hope feels distant, the memory of exultation is just enough to hold onto the hope of its return.
Hope always remains, for the presence and love of God are not defined by elections or the affairs of state. Rather, the victory and the power of God are defined by reconciliation, and experienced by us wherever there is evidence of reconciliation. Cross + Resurrection = Reconciliation. Thus, no matter the tenor of your day, our work remains the same, to be reconcilers in a world fraught with animosity. So, let us look for the reconcilers and let us be reconcilers. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”
Remember, Jesus said, “In the world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world.”
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