Psalm 60: you will reap what you sow

A tone of wailing can be heard throughout this psalm. Pain and defeat are confessed, and help is asked of God. It’s a tortured prayer, after a battle that’s left Israel in a pretty sorry state. “God, you have rejected us…” the author cries out. A better exclamation would have been, “God, what have we done to deserve this?” and the answer would have been, “Plenty.”

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s a Biblical fact that God stuck by Israel all the time. His promises of blessings and protection were conditional, and were spelled out by Moses quite clearly before they entered Canaan. If they ever were to stray from Him, they would be humiliated at the hands of their enemies. That was one of the curses. (Read up on the promises made to the Israelites in Deuteronomy. The whole of that chapter is filled with them.) If Israel had stayed close to God, they would have been victorious in battle. In our covenant with God, it is we who should look to ourselves when the promises are not fulfilled. We can’t blame God. He always upholds His part of the bargain.

Had this author asked himself what Israel had done, he’d have made much more progress with his prayer. The logical next step after that would have been to ask God what could be done to heal the rift between Him and His people, and then this prayer would have been truly fruitful. As it stands, it is simply a wail of pain, and a nostalgic recollection of victorious times of the past.

What do you think? Was God disappointed by this? I think He was. He expected a little more substance. So let this be a lesson to all of us in the here and now. Let’s not waste His time when we pray with complaints about how bad we’ve got it, or how good it used to be. Let’s examine ourselves, and see just what stands between us and Him. Then we should ask Him to help us get close to Him again, and heal our too-weak and spiritually emaciated souls, so that His Spirit may work in us once more, and inspire us to do His will. It is then that we will experience victory in our lives, both internal and external. Dwelling on the past never solves anything. Let’s all decide to move forward in our relationships with God.