Thought for the Day - Tuesday 1 September

 Thought for the Day – Tuesday 1^st September

‘I call to you, O Lord my rock: do not refuse to listen, for if you keep silent I shall be like those who go down into the depths. Hear my entreaty as I beg you for help, and as I lift up my hands towards your dwelling place.’’(Psalm 28: 1-2)

I think I must be needing to get myself a new mobile phone!

Sometimes I can be talking to someone and for no reason at all the line just suddenly goes dead, sometimes the person I am talking with can hear me but I cannot hear them and sometimes it seems the other way round as if I am just talking away to myself because they cannot hear a word I am saying!

I was thinking about this situation this morning just before I read our text and realised that actually all these possible scenarios with my mobile phone kind of reflect prayer – don’t they?

One day we can be blissfully aware of God and his presence and on others when we feel fearful, afraid or in despair we can feel like he has cut us off – like the line between us has gone absolutely dead. (Although he never would!) Sometimes we feel like we are having a conversation with him telling him everything, pouring our heart out to him, but then feel as if we cannot hear him and what he is saying back to us. Sometimes we get the feeling that we are doing all the talking and because our prayers do not seem to be answered we assume that he just cannot be hearing a word we are saying.

Well think of David, for it is obvious when we read the Psalms that on more than one occasion he felt just like this. Here in this one he is crying out to God, begging him to listen, patently aware that an answer may not always be forthcoming right there and then. In Psalm 22 he is even more distressed and poignantly calls out to God – ‘I cry to you by day, yet you do not answer; and by night, yet find no relief.’

How true this can feel for us at times!

I don’t know about you but I have been doing a lot of praying during this pandemic, for people and their safety, for situations which have arisen, for doctors and nurses, for researchers and for vaccines to be found and so on and so forth and at times I have truly felt that those prayers were being answered.

Now though, hearing the news today of the rate of infection once more seeming to rise here and around the world - and with it I am sure the fear inside folks of a second wave and the despair of what might be to come, that’s when we can begin to feel even more like David, when we can begin to feel that somehow the line to God is not fully connected and we begin to doubt that we are actually hearing each other when we pray.    

Yet, even after his times of despair in both these Psalms, and in so many more of the Psalms he penned, David ends them with an outpouring of praise to God, with expressions of praise and thanksgiving to God, with an expression of trust in God. He knows deep down in himself that God has heard, God has listened and God will respond.

I feel we will have much prayer to undertake in the days and weeks and months to come as we all endeavour to get the infection rate as low as possible again to allow us to live a ‘new normal life’, and as we try so desperately to remove the fear of Covid-19 and potential isolation from our lives.

However, if we ever feel in our prayer life that the line has gone dead, or that God is not hearing or that we are not listening, let’s remember David and what he went through and be assured by him and the very testimony of scripture itself that our God is a God who always listens, always hears and who will always respond and answer those prayers.

Prayer

 

Loving Lord,

You promise never to forsake us, but to bring us to life, so we ask that you would nurture us with your presence, and sustain us as we pray without ceasing. Meet us in our deepest doubts, meet us when we feel abandoned, meet us when we are overwhelmed by fear, and by the fear of your absence from our lives. Each time we pray may we be confident that you are there and listening to our words and that you will respond in love. In all we do may we know your mercy and grace in this our time of need. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.