Greetings in Christ,
Why dost thou stand afar off, O Lord? Why dost thou hide thyself in times of trouble?
Psalm 10:1
I have gotten in the habit of checking the rain gauge as one of the first things I do each morning. It read an inch and a half this morning. It also tells me that we have had 7.2 inches so far in October and just under 100 inches for the year. We have gotten to the point where jokes about the rain fall flat and there is a gnawing anxiety about the crops. We can resonate with the opening verse of Psalm 10, wondering if God has hidden Himself, turned a deaf ear to our prayers.
It is challenging to remain hopeful when everything seems to be going against you. Most of us will experience a time in our lives where God’s mercy and grace seem absent, that He may be hearing others when they pray, but not ours. It is a very hard place to be. The suffering becomes increasingly hard to bear and our faith is strained to the breaking point.
St. Paul experienced this as well: 2 Corinthians 12:7–10
And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Like St. Paul, we must learn the sufficient grace of God in Christ. We may never in this life know or understand the reason for the suffering and challenges we have faced. As we trust the Father in Christ, even in our weakness we can know that Jesus is with us.