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 4th 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.
