Unusual comfort

I don't know if the spiritual journey in Christ is anything like Maslow's graduated hierarchy of needs, where you get bumped up from the more primal to the more poetic challenges as your basics are taken care of: first breathing and food, then safety and shelter, then love, then esteem, then self-actualization.

It only stands to reason, I suppose, since I presently have no issues of eating, housing, love, self-image, and the rest, that I should be tested by God in more rarified areas: perplexity about His will, suffering that seems to no purpose, delayed answer to prayer.

And so the Lord has brought to my attention treasures of odd comfort in the Psalms that I had no need of before. These I would like to share with you today.

Hebrews is not a formidable length if you read it straight through. But I have been stopping at every signpost, and detouring into the thicket of Old Testament passages referenced. In Hebrews 1:6 Jesus is called the Father's "firstborn," a snatch of verse from Psalm 89. The quoted part looks all light and airy, so you turn to the Psalm itself, expecting to find a soul-rousing paean to God by his "firstborn" and beloved Son, who is righteous (verse 14) and anointed (verse 20). And so you do, until suddenly, at verse 38 it all turns black, and the "firstborn" finds himself fighting for breath in the valley of despond. He is baffled, "cast off" by God, the object of God's "fury" for no apparent reason.

Hebrews 1:10 is another trap laid. Here Jesus is identified as the creator, in a reference to Psalm 102. But only the happy part of the Psalm is referenced. Flip back and read the entire thing and you find more of what you found in Psalm 89: crisis, confusion, perplexity on the part of the firstborn and creator. There is a sense that the Father has abandoned him, and He is almost too weak to go on.

Move on to Hebrews 2:12 and there is yet another uplifting passage about Jesus---"I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise"---as if all is well in the 22nd Psalm from which it comes. But dare to turn to that Psalm, and what do you find? The most distressing words of all: The firstborn now crying out in near despair to a Father who has turned his back.

God is very clever. He knew that I would one day bother to look up these entire Psalms, and not read only the happy parts cited in Hebrews. He knew that I would take note that they were all descriptions of Jesus' life, the deep despondency as well as the joys. And He knew the effect all this would have on me---great hope and joy in my own worst sloughs of despond.

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