Psalm 22: Spiritual Warfare – Part III – A Reprise
Thursday, November 2, 2023
This Favorite was written on November 11, 2008, Veteran’s Day in the U.S.A., and we post it again in reprise as we consider spiritual and physical warfare.
In spiritual warfare we need not connive, we need not plot. We need only do what we know is right, understanding that we are graced by God. We need to avoid thinking that we are in control, knowing that God’s plan is always better than our own. We need to give over everything to God, believing that God turns all harm to good, even – and especially – the ultimate resolution of all conflict.
We are foot soldiers in spiritual warfare, and we know our orders. We must be patient in our perseverance as we grow to become God’s harvest in God’s time. We must speak, pray, study, witness, watch and wait. We must be ready. This is all that is required of us. We do not know the hour or time of this warfare’s end; but we know the outcome. This we have been promised. This we have been told. Let us pass the word along . . . that in the hour when we feel most abandoned, we are most accompanied. That in the hour when we believe all is lost, all is truly found.
And so we pray.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned us? We have cried desperately for help, but still it does not come. During the day we call to you, our God, but you do not answer; we call at night, but get no rest.
In the dark hours when we anticipate a resolution for our own plan, we worry that God has disappeared, or perhaps does not exist at all. In the burdensome days we keep watch for any sign that God is near.
It was God who brought us safely through birth, and when we were babies, God kept us safe. We have relied on God since the day we were born, and the LORD have always been our God.
Yet when we consider all that God has done for us, we cannot help but give voice to the hope that rests within, waiting to bloom into fullness.
Our strength is gone, gone like water spilled on the ground. All our bones can be seen. Our enemies look at us and stare.
And when we allow our faith to support us, we cannot help but rise from the ash of all we leave behind into a new dawn and new day, growing in newness.
We will tell our people what God have done; we will praise God in their assembly. We will praise God for all that God has have done. We will offer the sacrifices we have promised.
And when we respond with persistent love, we cannot help but take hold of the promise we already rest in, relying on God’s bounty, relying on God’s boldness, relying on God’s peace. Amen.
Image from: http://www.thechristianmeditator.com/equipping-the-saints-for-spiritual-warfare-and-end-times/
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