My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! – Psalm 31:15
My good friend with whom I share a given name is a
pastor. When we were younger, and I
needed a job, I would send out resumes and have job interviews. Whenever he needed to know if he needed a new
pastorate, he would pray, “Our times, Lord, are in Your hands. Choose for us our changes.” To some extent, I learned to do the same
thing, to put my time into the hands of God.
While my friend is certainly a better man than I am, he isn’t
perfect. He’s missed the will of God a
time or two. He ran from a stressful
situation when, it seemed to me, he should have stayed. Once or twice he might have let his ego get
the better of him and become discontented with his lot. It’s all minor stuff. Nothing big or really bad like what David
did. On the other hand, it is probably best not to delve too deeply into some of my past antics.
Regardless of degree or extent, most of us have brought
suffering upon ourselves and can relate to David’s lament in Psalm 31. I had a man ask me one time how I had gotten
myself into such a mess. I replied
without any hesitation, “I was stupid.”
He said, “At least you’re honest.”
It didn’t really make me feel all that much better.
When we get into that kind of a situation, it’s hard to ask
God to save us because of our righteousness, is it not? We have to ask instead that He rescue us by
His righteousness (Psalm 31:1). The
thing that is hard to believe is that He will do that. If you doubt it, there is the Cross with the
bleeding God-Man nailed to die.
Sorrows are part of life.
Whether the straits we find ourselves in are of our own making or not,
we ought to put the course of our life into the hands of God. It’s the only sensible thing to do whether we
came to our distress by lack of faith and obedience or because of our faith and
obedience. If it is the former, it is
time to turn around. If it is the latter,
we have come too far to turn back now.
