Thursday, April 4, 2013

Our shelter and strength

What does this mean to us? Psalm 46 says that "God is our shelter and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not be afraid, even if the earth is shaken and mountains fall into the ocean depths; even if the seas roar and rage, and the hills are shaken by the violence."

One reads this and sees nothing but blue skies ahead. But those skies aren't always blue, and for some they are outright dark.

In numerous letters, which Mother Teresa  repeatedly begged her superiors to destroy, she describes her experiences of profound spiritual darkness that haunted her for fifty years. She admits that she didn't practice what she preached, and laments the stark contrast between her exterior demeanor and her interior desolation: "The smile is a big cloak which covers a multitude of pains. . . . my cheerfulness is a cloak by which I cover the emptiness and misery. . . . I deceive people with this weapon."

Mother Teresa describes the absence of God's presence in various ways—an emptiness, loneliness, pain, spiritual dryness, or lack of consolation. "There is so much contradiction in my soul, no faith, no love, no zeal. . . . I find no words to express the depths of the darkness. . . . My heart is so empty. . . . so full of darkness. . . . I don't pray any longer. The work holds no joy, no attraction, no zeal. . . . I have no faith, I don't believe."

With some of Jesus' last breaths, he screamed to the heavens,  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Reformer Martin Luther was famous for his inner struggles with his creator. "God present and God absent, God too near and God too far, the God of wrath and the God of love, God weak and God almighty, God real and God as illusion, God hidden and God revealed."

But Luther found solace in this Psalm, particularly in its end: "The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."

It is those thoughts that we survive, even thrive, I think. It is the fact that though the world might be in turmoil around me, God is with me. Though I can't find Him sometimes, and I willingly admit I can't at times, He is there. Why? That's his nature. To be trustworthy at all times.

This Psalm, in fact, inspired one of Luther's greatest achievements, the hymn A Mighty Fortress. He wrote, "
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth His name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.


As a friend said last night, it is still all about him and not about us. Can we get to the point that we not only recognisance that, but revel in it?

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