Sustained

Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved. – Psalm 55:22

The last few days have been very intense.  My break on the 4^th was 12 hours of labor in the yard and garden.  I probably put in 30 hours at work on Friday and Saturday.  Monday was a long day but not quite as bad.  Yesterday started out normally and went downhill fast -- perhaps that’s why “cast your burden on the LORD” caught me.    

This Psalm, though, isn’t about the grind and pressures of daily life but about betrayal, as the writer laments:  “For it is not an enemy who taunts me— then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me— then I could hide from him.  But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.  We used to take sweet counsel together; within God's house we walked in the throng.”  This prefigures the betrayal of Judas, and though the Lord was not surprised by His disciple’s perfidy, it was no doubt still painful.  Nothing hurts like unfaithfulness and disloyalty. 

Quisling, Benedict Arnold, Judas – these were the names of men but they have come to be synonyms for “traitor”.  Everything about Benedict Arnold, the fact that he was a talented officer who contributed significantly to the crucial victory at Saratoga and captured Fort Ticonderoga, is dismissed because of his defection.   Faithlessness buries everything else in an unmarked grave. 

A few weeks ago, I sat and listened to someone who had had a little too much to drink.  He was talking about friends and family members who had let him down.  His spirit is slowly being poisoned by disappointment in the people he thought he could trust.   To look at him and listen to him most of the time a person might be reminded of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, or some other classic tough guy.  He is a man of honor, one to be counted on.  It would never occur to him not to do what he said he would do much less deliberately deceive and play on another’s confidence as was done to him.

Treason is diabolical.  The father of lies is the original traitor, and here lies sin’s bitterest root.  Conversely, [e]very good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.   God cannot deceive us or betray us.  He cannot fail us and remains faithful even when we fail Him.  He can be trusted in every situation and circumstance.  There is no pit into which we are cast where He will not be with us.  He asks only that we believe that simple truth.