April 19, 2010

All the passages today, from Luke on, seemed to speak to me of the consequences of rejecting the Word of God.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem, prophesying that “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44

As I read Psalm 88, it seemed like the psalmist (not David) was seeing ahead to that day of destruction and expressing the feelings of a people who had experienced that destruction.  He seemed not to see the restoration, but that doesn't mean there was not to be one.  It reminds me of the times I have been in the throes of deep depression and hopelessness.  It does truly feel like a waking death.  However, I can testify that if we will continue to cry out to the Lord, He will come to us, and again reveal Himself to us and restore us, if we will respond to Him and believe His word to us.  He will come with whatever we need-- conviction, correction, healing-- but He always comes with love.

How often, I wonder, does our Lord visit our life with His presence and weep for our lack of response to Him?  It does not give Him pleasure to have to bring discipline, or to have to allow us to "hit bottom" so that we will turn to Him.  But one thing is certain, when we do realize we are in need of Him, He will answer our cry for help.  He will come with "the things that make for our peace."