On Turning to God

On Turning to God

Scripture: Psalm 116:1-4

We live in difficult times these days. Death and grief are always with us mere mortals, but these days are different. We are living with a coronavirus pandemic that has significantly impacted all of our lives. Many of us are in lock down, staying home except when we absolutely have to go out. Millions upon millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Many of them can’t make their rent or mortgage payments and don’t know where their next meal will come from. Many who still go to work out in the world worry every second about becoming infected. Most tragically several tens of thousands of Americans and far more than that around the world have died because of coronavirus infection. Tens of thousands, and more, grieve the unexpected deaths of loved ones. The economy is stagnant at best. Our federal government and some state governments have botched the governmental response to the pandemic, thereby making a bad situation worse. We don’t know when or perhaps even if this pandemic will end and life can get back to something at least approximating normal. Yes, we live in difficult times.

Our times are difficult, but they’re hardly unique in human history. Humans in every time and place have experienced difficult times, some of them far more difficult and tragic than our current times are. Some of the difficulties people experience are only personal, are due to circumstances particular to an individual person. Others are caused by more general circumstances like our current difficult times are. Either way, difficult times tend to have one of two effects on people with regard to their relationship with God. Some people ask “Where was God? How could God do this to me? What good is God to me if God does this or even just lets this happen? Isn’t God supposed to protect me?” Some people just live with those questions. Others, however, lose their faith altogether. Especially if they’ve been taught, as so many so tragically have, that if their faith is strong enough and they pray hard enough bad things won’t happen. Hard times really can destroy faith.

Others turn to God in their difficulties and find comfort and support there. We hear that reaction in the opening lines of Psalm 116. The psalmist says that “the snares of death encompassed” him. Saying the same thing in different words he says “the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me,” Sheol being the fate of all persons after death in ancient Judaism. He suffered “distress and anguish.” Sadly a great many people today know from personal experience what this ancient author was feeling. Death is all around us even more powerfully than usual. We feel distress at being cooped up. We feel distress when we have to go out for any reason because of the risk of infection. We feel anguish at being separated from our loved ones except electronically, which is better than nothing but really isn’t at all the same thing as person to person contact. We feel anguish when we hear the heartbreaking stories of people dying in isolation from their families. We feel the anguish of grief when someone we know, maybe even someone we love, dies of COVID-19. Yes, these days more than ever we know what Psalm 116 is talking about.

Yet Psalm 116 is ultimately a psalm of thanksgiving and even joy. The psalmist says that God “inclined his ear” to him and heard his “voice and supplications.” In his distress he called on God: “O Lord I pray, save my life!” God, it seems, did save his life, so he uses the rest of his psalm to express his thanks to God. Perhaps you have an experience something like the psalmist’s. I have. Some of you who know me may have heard or read this story before, but it fits so well here that I’m going to tell it again.

On Wednesday, July 31, 2002, my wife of thirty years, the mother of my two children, died of cancer. We had known for at least a few months that death was coming for her. I thought I was ready. I wasn’t. Her death laid me low with grief. I felt an anguish more painful than anything I could ever have imagined. The next Saturday morning I was in the shower crying in emotional anguish. I sank to my knees. I just couldn’t stand. I cried out “God, lift me up!” Immediately, so fast I had no time to think about the matter at all, some force outside of my control gently grabbed me and put me back on my feet. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it in the shape I was in. Somehow I knew that God had heard my supplication and responded by doing for me what I could not do for myself. That doleful morning God was present with me holding me and loving me in my grief. It was the most powerful experience of my life.

There is one big and important difference between my story and the experience of psalmist of Psalm 116 that we must notice. In the psalm we hear that the author was faced with death, and God saved him. The life circumstance that threatened his life and caused such distress and anguish, whatever it was, was solved. In my case it wasn’t, at least not in the way most people in such grief would want. My wife didn’t come back to life. My grief didn’t go away. Time helps, but my grief hasn’t gone away today almost eighteen years later. The psalmist and I had similar if not identical feelings but had different outcomes.

Here’s the lesson, I think. God is with us always. God is with us in joy and in grief. God is with us in life and in death. God is with us, and God is for us. God loves us. God cares for us, usually in quiet, subtle ways but sometimes in loud and dramatic ones. So many of us feel God’s presence and love only rarely, but that’s out fault not God’s. In distress and anguish the psalmist of Psalm 116 turned to God, and God was there. In my grief years ago I turned to God, and God was there.

Many of us are in distress and anguish these days. We can learn a good lesson from Psalm 116. I learned a good lesson that day in the shower. Turn to God. God will be there for you. Indeed God is already there for you. God probably won’t make this pandemic and all of the limitations it puts on us go away any time soon, but God is here with us. God can lift you up. God can be your rock. God lifted me up that day. God was my rock and solace in those days nearly unbearable grief. Turn to God and receive blessings only God can give. It will get you through. Amen.