Read Psalm 74:9-17. 9We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long. 10How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? 11Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them! 12Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. 13You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. 14You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. 15You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams. 16Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. 17You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.
The people of God are not immune from disaster (see yesterday’s reading), but worse yet than even the terror of the enemy is the silence of God.
No signs.
No prophets.
No answers.
No timetable.
Yet God.
With these two words the psalm changes course as does the heart of the one singing the verse. This experience is nothing new. God is from old. He has waited before. He has been silent before. He acts as he sees fit. But when he does act, it is huge. Asaph recalls the Exodus and the Creation. Of course, we must add the cross. Everything is tiny in comparison to creating day and night, summer and winter. Every enemy is puny compared to Leviathan of the sea (Egypt).
Everything we face today is puny compared to what Jesus faced for us on the cross. Your worst enemy today is likely yourself, and you have been conquered by Christ’s life. The Leviathan of indwelling sin has been crushed. The new creation is alive in you. The boundaries of your heart have been set, eternally secured by his grace.
To live is Christ is to embrace the silence of God in our waiting, knowing that the cruciform life is always a life of patiently remembering yet God until he returns.
You: Does God seem silent to you lately?
You in Christ: In what way is the cross God’s answer to you today?
Christ in you. How can you embrace the silence of the cruciform life today?
Pray: Father, at times your silence is deafening. In the darkness and in the silence remind me that you are inviting me into the life of the cross. Amen.
To Live is Christ 