Dear Friends.
This week there was an article in the newspaper entitled
‘Where is God in this crisis?
The implication is of course, that God isn’t anywhere to be found.
King David once asked a question very like that too:-
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
– Psalm 22 v1
‘Where is God in this crisis?’
But wonderfully the answer comes immediately afterwards, in Psalm 23, also a Psalm of David.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me!”
‘Where is God in this crisis?’
He is with me!
How come? How can God be with me even in the middle of a crisis, when I am going through a deathly experience and perhaps don’t even feel His presence? And the answer to that question comes in the following Psalm, yet another Psalm of David!
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.”
God is with me, because God has made me and this universe and He has not abandoned me.
Psalm 22 is about Suffering. Psalm 23 is about a Shepherd. And Psalm 24 is about a Sovereign Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
Taken together they address that question posed in the newspaper:-
‘Where is God in this crisis?’
Amazingly, astonishingly, incredibly, believers can say,
“God is with us in our suffering.
He is with us in our deathly experiences.
He is with us in our unworthiness.”
And how do we know that?
Because Jesus, the Good Shepherd, laid down his life for his sheep!
This week a group of musicians from our congregation recorded a version of Psalm 23 in their various homes and John Campbell expertly put the various parts together for us to enjoy and to remind us of God’s powerful presence and peace. Listen to “The King of Love my Shepherd is” and triumphantly affirm, along with the Psalmist, “And so through all the length of days your goodness fails me never: Good Shepherd, may I sing your praise within your house for ever!”
Most Sincerely from Frank