I Am With You by Kathryn Greene-McCreight

Author:Kathryn Greene-McCreight
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472915252
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

6

Second Watch: God’s Presence When All is Dark

LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger;

do not punish me in your wrath.

Have pity on me, LORD, for I am weak;

heal me, LORD, for my bones are racked.

My spirit shakes with terror;

how long, O LORD, how long?

Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;

save me for your mercy's sake.

For in death no one remembers you;

and who will give you thanks in the grave?

I grow weary because of my groaning;

every night I drench my bed

and flood my couch with tears.

My eyes are wasted with grief

and worn away because of all my enemies.

Depart from me, all evildoers,

for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.

The LORD has heard my supplication;

the LORD accepts my prayer.

All my enemies shall be confounded and quake with fear;

they shall turn back and suddenly be put to shame.

PSALM 6

God’s Presence and the Nature of Faith

I have noticed that the secular world seems to take it as a given that people of faith have no questions. We have seen that this is not the case. The nature and experience of Christian confession is not immune to the experience of doubt. Our faith is not a simple matter of cognitive assent to certain propositions of Christian teaching (or what we call ‘doctrine’). Liturgical traditions include the recitation of historic creeds as part of worship, and creeds certainly do contain ‘propositions’ or truth claims. But even there, the larger context is worship, not debate. Christian faith does not boil down to a set of statements about God’s possible existence.

At the centre of our faith is, as we have seen, a relationship of trust and faithfulness before the presence of the Triune God in Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian Gospel has to do with the practice of living faithfully at the foot of the Cross even in a world filled with pain, vulnerability, suffering and darkness. Who would not stand quaking in one’s boots from time to time before the Holy One of Israel? Who does not at some point dwell in the Valley of the Shadow?

But we are told that God is with us even there. That even there God is with us and will lead us by the hand. That God is present with us even in that valley. That God scatters evil: ‘For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, and evil cannot dwell with you’ (Ps. 5.4). However, we do not always experience God’s presence this way.

It seems as though the secular world caricatures our faith as though it were some sort of talisman to ward off evil, that if found deficient, should be cast aside. But maybe that is what we have made of it. Maybe our God is too small, and we are too large. But if we were large and our God were small, how would He meet us even in suffering? And yet that is exactly what happens on Good Friday.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he

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