Psalm 77
About a year after I had graduated from college, I was in a deep depression. One day, my fifth alarm had gone off, and I remember opening my eyes, looking up at the ceiling and telling God I couldn’t do it anymore. “I can’t get out of this bed, I can’t go one more day to work, I can’t do this life anymore.” His response was the most tender of whispers, “Get up, because I love you. Brush your teeth, because I love you. Go to work, because I love you. Live this life, because I love you.” Isn’t this similar to what we just read in Psalm 77? “You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak...Your way, O God is holy. What god is great like our God?” (verse 4 and 13). In one of the darkest moments of my life, God spoke to me about the purpose of my life. Because he loves me I live. When I can’t even keep my own eyelids open or get out of bed I see the one who can lift me up. I call on the God who hears me. The Psalm accurately describes human life, does it not? We fall into a pit, we believe the lies that are in verses 7-9, and we find ourselves too weak to pull ourselves out.
Our weakness is good, though, because we get to see God and his character more clearly in it. The second half of this Psalm goes on to describe the true attributes of God. He is a worker of wonder (v. 11), mighty (v. 12), holy (v. 13), great (v.13), redeemer (v.15), powerful (v. 16-19) and shepherd (v. 20). We are not any of those things. God calls us to be people who remember so we can remember these things about him. The psalmist remembers the stories of God leading his people through Moses, his recalling the covenant to redeem through Jacob and Joseph. When we are weak, when we are in the pit, when we are walking blind through the dark night of the soul, we call on the mighty works and wonders of our God. It is in the remembering we cling to the cross, cling to the strength of the Spirit who dwells within us, cling to God who walks with us intimately and tenderly whispering, “Keep going, because I love you.”
Church, let us be a people who live because God loves us. Let us be a people who call out to our God because of who he is. Let us be a people who in times where God seems to have forgotten us, remind ourselves of his past faithfulness and his promised goodness. If he never gives us another good gift, let us worship because of the Gospel. Jesus has come for us, he is calling to us and let us rejoice in that.
