Sitting at Tables

Secret.  Life often sucks.  This morning I am thinking of several friends, friends of friends, or current news.  Every person who occupies a space in my head has a story of hurt.  The hurt is real enough that it could overtake them.  The ones that I know personally who are hurting make me hurt, too.  Funny how we humans empathize with friends.  This must be how God feels when we hurt.  After all, we are made in the image of the One who whispered life into our bodies.

Secret.  I love order.  Usually, this love of order spills right into my morning routine (the fact that I said routine should be a blatant give-a-way of my love of order).  I usually have a plan of what to read in my Bible.  From that plan, I write insights, prayers, heart moments.  This morning, no plan.  The weight of the hurt from others weighs me down in heavy clothes and mood.  The only plan I have is to seek the One who knows the hurt.

Secret.  I love David.  Often schizophrenic in His approach to God, I can relate.  He bears all, this man after God's own heart.  He rises on heights seemingly too high for mere mortals and then falls so deep the dark overtakes him.  The only consistency in his writing is that he knows - KNOWS - the One to whom he praises or bellows from his belly




Sounds desperate?  Desperate and real.  Yet in these moments of letting emotion mote and feelings feel he follows up with:

"God is my shield."
"God is an honest judge."
"I will thank the Lord who is just."

He knows himself.  He is not his own shield, an honest judge, or just when it comes to his enemies.  In the heat of the moment, we often misplace our pain.  We place it on God, ourselves, others and beg that it be erased, immediately.  But what I see in our friend, David, is that he overturns his natural tendency to spout unreal sentiments in the heat of the moment and surrender his feelings to the authority of God.

Secret.  I love promises.  When someone promises me they will do something, bring me something, offer me something ... I delight.  When God gives me a promise, I hold on for dear life.  I hold on too tightly, afraid, in fact, that the circumstances I find myself in will somehow have the power to undo the promise given and make me hurt all the more.  Can we all just recognize that as a lie?

A promise - in the middle of pain - doesn't always erase the pain or change my circumstances but it gives me HOPE.  The kind of hope that Psalm 37 speaks about ... "trust in the Lord and do good and you will live safely in the land and prosper."  Trust - in the middle of the pain - the promise of God.

Finally, I love that David gives a visual of this because visual learner that I am, I need a picture.  Here's the picture.  A table.  A table in the middle of chaos.  Psalm 23:5 paints a beautiful picture of what holding on to a promise in the middle of pain looks like, "He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies."  A promise from God is a certificate of authority.  Use it and trust it.  It's your ticket toward resting in the middle of pain and not succumbing to it.

Sitting at a table ...
Christina