Psalm 38

These verses are very apt today.

"O Lord do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath, for your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. Be cause of your wrath, there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me, like a burden to heavy to bear.

My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed.

All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors are far away. Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception.

I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute, who cannot open his mouth; I have become like a man who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply. I wait for you, O Lord, and you will answer, O Lord my God. For I said 'Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.'

For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity, I am troubled by my sin. Many are those who are my vigorous enemies; those who hate me without reason are numerous. Those who repay my good with evil slander me when I pursue what is good.

O Lord, do not forsake me, be not far from me, O my God. Come quickly to help me, O Lord my savior."

To anyone who feels that the Old Testament is old hat, I would challenge that by saying that psalms like this *jerks thumb at above scripture* shatter whatever illusions of outdatedness or antiquity people may have about it.

If you are even remotely in David's condition, act as David has. Quite few things of what David mentions, except for maybe loathsome festering wounds (and including very unpleasant back pain), have really struck me today. I finally gave it to the Lord in prayer. If you are reading this but aren't "getting it" , pray that your eyes would be opened to see the meaning of this passage, and that it would pierce your heart the way it has struck mine today. If there is intense suffering in your life, there is a reason for it's occurance. That reason has to do with us. But it also has a purpose, and that purpose is to draw us close to the Lord...because 999 times out of a thousand (and probably far more than that), this kind of suffering is what brings us close to the Lord, not our own will. People always refer to God in calamity- "Why me!?" (or in frustration..."God dammit!"....). But what we think of God determines how we address him. We tend to either do so in cursing (as above) or in prayer, if we believe in God's goodness and power.