Never Give Up by Bill Crofton

“What does God know?” they ask.
    “Does the Most High even know what’s happening?”
Look at these wicked people—
    enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply.

Did I keep my heart pure for nothing?
    Did I keep myself innocent for no reason?
I get nothing but trouble all day long;
    every morning brings me pain.

Psalm 73:11-14 NIV

Whoever wrote Psalm 73 was obviously bewildered and a little bitter.  Feeling abandoned, alone, and in despair from cruel circumstance, he began to ask the crucial questions:  Does God realize what’s going on down here?  Does God know?  Surely, if he knew, he would do something.  Have I been wasting my time?  Why do I take the trouble to be pure?  Perhaps God doesn’t care.  Have I kept the faith in vain?  What’s the use if it does not matter?

We don’t know all that had happened to the psalmist, but we do know that he simply could not understand the prosperity and good fortune of the wicked and the hardships being experienced by the righteous.  It didn’t fit his scheme of things.  Goodness and good fortune should go together; wickedness and suffering should operate together.  If not, the psalmist concluded, then keeping the faith was a sheer waste of time. 

Have you ever asked some of these questions?  Have you felt the same frustration as the author of Psalm 73?  Sooner or later, all of us come to that intersection of contradiction in the journey that is called life. The good seem to suffer; the wicked seem to prosper.  The reality is, as Scott Peck put it in the Road Less Traveled, “Life is hard.”  All of life’s music is not in perfect harmony.  What starts out to be a symphony becomes a cacophony, and discordant notes often dominate the score.

I enjoy the wisdom of Charlie Brown, via Charles Shultz, and one particular cartoon came to mind.  Lucy was saying to Charlie Brown, “I hate everything.  I hate everybody.  I hate the whole wide world!”

Charlie says, “But I thought you had inner peace.”

Lucy replies, “I do have inner peace.  But I still have outer obnoxiousness.”

Later in the psalm we see that the author pushed through and kept worshiping and trusting in God.  He comes to the conclusion that the promises of God are adequate.  Out of the bitterness that had engulfed him, he says,

Then I realized that my heart was bitter,
    and I was all torn up inside.
I was so foolish and ignorant—
    I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.
Yet I still belong to you;
    you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
    leading me to a glorious destiny.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
    I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
    but God remains the strength of my heart;
    he is mine forever.

Psalm 73:21-26 NIV

If you find yourself angry and bewildered, if you are trying hard to find some perspective on life and you do not fully understand, the psalmist is saying, “trust in God, trust in God and never, never give up.”

Bill Crofton