David Troxler
Psalm 44
The psalmist author of today’s passage has been told the wonderful stories of God’s intervention for Israel:
We have heard with our ears, O God,
our ancestors have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
you with your own hand drove out the nations,
in the days of old:
but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
but them you set free;
our ancestors have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
you with your own hand drove out the nations,
in the days of old:
but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
but them you set free;
How we want the same thing to happen today! We long for the intervention of the Lord to stamp out evil and to redeem the broken. We earnestly want the enslaved peoples set free. Some are held in bondage physically, caught in sex trafficking. Others are in the bondage of drugs. Still others are in the bondage of disease or grief. The Lord has delivered people from each of these forms of bondage, and we cry out “Do it again, O Lord, do it all over again!”
The psalm does not end with that cry however. Instead, the psalmist recognizes a problem. This longing has been unanswered and God seems absent. It is as if to say, “We have heard all about your triumphs, but where are you now God?” In the midst of this longing, there is a sense of despair, for the psalmist writes, “Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” There is a sense of abandonment by God.
The Apostle Paul takes up this same verse in his letter to the Romans (8:36) and then in triumph says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The prayer of longing written in the psalms has been answered and the love of God in Christ is the source of our victory. It is the evidence that God is indeed “doing it again” and demonstrating the greatness that the ancestors of Israel recorded for us all. We are the heirs of this blessing! We are the ones being set free through him who loved us.
May your Advent longings be satisfied today through Christ’s love filling your heart!