I love the Psalms. Scripture is full of the external view of faith; what faith looks like on the outside, men and women who, in faith, see God part the Red Sea and raise their loved ones from the dead, who watch Jesus make water into wine and speak the seas into submission.
But the Psalms is a view of salvation, of faith, from inside a person. It is a written account of what it’s like, day to day, to experience the living, active God in the visceral world. It’s raw. No depth of despair, no venomous anger, no disappointment is left out. But the faith in the Psalms? It’s fierce.
Take this little Psalm – Psalm 13 – for example. It opens in a desperate cry from one who feels forgotten. Beaten. Out of time. Hopeless and anguished.
And it ends with this defiance: “I will sing to the LORD because he is good to me.”
That declaration of faith downright defies circumstance. It is stubborn and fierce and refuses to budge in the face of appearances and the subsequent flood of emotions. It holds firm to its hope and will not give it up. It knows that when all looks hopeless and lost, God isn’t.
God isn’t hopeless. God isn’t lost. God is good. And I trust Him.
HUZZAH.
A faith defiant.
I love the Psalms!