Daily Devotion, June 2, 2021

 

Devotion:

Read Psalm 13.

Sometimes we pray for a long season or many years, yet do not sense that God is answering. The Psalmist gives voice to our question: “How long, O Lord?” yet ends with the note of faith.

During my childhood and youth years, every Wednesday evening I would hear the prayer requests of faithful Christians. The prayer requests included requests for members of their family to become Christians, for their children to make good choices during their youth and college years, and for their job lives to be better. For ten years I heard those requests and often wondered like the Psalmist, “How long, O lord?”

The example these faithful Christians gave was that they definitely trusted in God’s unfailing love. Several years later, I rejoiced with them as they relayed reports of the many ways God had responded to their prayers. We all sang praises of the many ways God had been good to them.

There is a beautiful honesty in Psalm 13. This prayer offers both complaints and urgent petitions and yet it ends with a note of faith! The Psalmist’s trust is on-going in God’s unfailing love. The “sorrow in the heart” is replaced with a “heart that rejoices in God’s salvation.”

Dr. J. Clinton McCann, Jr. says, “By holding together complaint and praise, we are taught about both God and ourselves. God is involved in all of life—even life at its worst. Such a conviction opens up the way to see God’s involvement even in such situations where it is difficult to “see” God’s presence and involvement. As for us, we are simultaneously confronted with our own perpetual neediness and comforted by the proclamation of God’s unfailing love.”

I continued to be inspired by the faithful ones of my childhood and youth years who never gave up praying and trusting God each step of the way. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 13, they inspired me with their honest prayers and their faithfulness as they trusted in God’s faithfulness and unfailing love.

Personal Worship Option:

Reflect on the last phrase of the third stanza of the hymn, “Sweet Hour of Prayer” written by Rev. W. W. Wallford in 1845. “I’ll cast on him my every care and wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!” God is always listening, involved and working, sometimes our part is in the waiting and trusting.