There is very little justice in the world. Many people feel that they are not being treated fairly. Just about all of us think we deserve a better deal than we are getting. We think that there is very little justice in the world. But that’s old news. We already know that. So what do you do with it?
Now you can either get frustrated with that fact, or you can shrug it off. You can either become a bitter and cynical person, who gripes that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and it isn’t fair; or you can accept reality and go on. But what you cannot do is to stuff down inside forever the feelings that go along with injustice. If you think the world is not just, and that hurts, either you can grumble about it or you can decide to work for something better; but the one thing you cannot do is to hold all that resentment in. Painful feelings have to go somewhere.
So do not ask whether bad things are going to happen to good people. They will. Do not bother with why bad things happen to good people. Whole books have been written to explain that, but I still don’t know anything better than to say that bad things just do happen to good people. They just do, no matter how good they are. My father-in-law was a pastor in England during the Second World War; he used to tell about the ladies from across the street who always wanted to crowd into his bomb shelter when there was an air raid. Now they had their own bomb shelter, but they thought they might be safer if they were close to the pastor! They thought that something that bad would not happen to a good man like the pastor. What do you think? I’m sorry, but I think that bad things happen to all kinds of good people, pastors included.
So, again, when bad things happen, what do you do with your feelings? You cannot hold in your angry, resentful feelings. Where will you take your complaint? What will you do with your resentment?
Now we Christians have a stock answer. We know what the correct answer is. “Take it to the Lord in prayer.” We sing, “I must tell Jesus all of my trials, I cannot bear these burdens alone.” Loud and clear, when bad things happen, we say we should pray and pray and pray some more. That’s our usual answer. And I certainly do not disagree with that. But what if prayer doesn’t help? What if prayer makes no difference? What if prayer bounces off the ceiling, like talking to the air?
Just this week my wife and I visited a couple who live not far from here, an older couple who have been married only a year … the second time around for each. One year after this happy marriage began, the husband has a cancer that has metastasized. His days are clearly numbered. We prayed together, of course; his wife said, “I don’t let anybody out of this house without their offering prayer.” Fine; great. But then she followed us out of the house and said, “I just feel like God has abandoned me.” Now I could have told her not to feel that way; I could have lectured her about how the Lord never fails us. But that would not have changed the cry of her heart. “God has abandoned me.” It’s what she feels. It’s a bad thing happening to some very good people, and they don’t like it! What are they going to do with their feelings?
There is no more anguished cry in the whole of Scripture than the 22nd Psalm. Its shriek of abandonment echoes across the centuries and sends cold chills up the spine. If ever there was a soul in torment, this is it. This is a storm of despair.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.
Behind this psalm something bad, something awesomely bad, has happened to a good person. It is bad because it erodes the spirit, it eats at the soul, it cracks open his relationship with God. When bad things happen to good people and they cannot even get God to hear them, what shall we say about that?
I
First, when bad things happen to good people, prayers of anguish are the right thing to do. God is ready to receive the prayer of anguish. Let’s make it clear that it is not wrong to pray with complaints. God will receive the prayer of complaint. God is big enough to handle angry prayer.
I’m struck with how many times the Psalmist comes through in this prayer with his complaints. It’s as though he’s stuck in his pain. He complains, and then he remembers God’s goodness. But he goes back to complain again, and then he remembers how God brought him up as a child. Then right back to complaining once again, before he cries out in sheer desperation. Three times in one psalm he lapses into extravagant descriptions of his plight. Three times he cries out in the dark night of his soul. He just keeps at it. He won’t shy away from his hurts.
The first lesson, then, that we need to learn is that we feel what we feel, and God can take it. God can handle it. God is big enough. Don’t edit your prayers. Don’t play nice with God. Get it out there. Say it. If you hurt, vomit it out. Don’t protect God from your gripes and your grumbling. God wants your honesty. God does not hear prayers that are all timid politeness; God hears the raw pain of the human heart.
Several years ago a friend of mine told me about his wife’s final illness. She knew she was going to die. She was a research biologist, and knew more about her disease than her doctors, so she knew what was coming. One afternoon she asked her husband to read her the psalms. He asked, “Which ones? Is there a favorite psalm?” She said, “Read them all. Just start at the beginning and read them all.” Well, he started: the first psalm, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked”. The great eighth psalm, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!” On he went; the nineteenth, the twentieth, the twenty-first. But then, my friend says, he hesitated. He looked at the next psalm, this one, the twenty-second, and he decided to skip it. It was too grim, too heavy. How much more lovely to read the twenty-third, everyone’s favorite, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” But he was interrupted by the patient on the bed. “You skipped one. Don’t skip it. Read it.” You see, she knew she needed the cry of complaint; she knew she needed to cry out in pain.
Yes, we do need to air our grievances before God. We do need to get out the bitter with the sweet. If you feel it, say it; say it to God. God is big enough to handle it, and this is one way your heart can let go of your hostility. When bad things happen to good people, go ahead, scream, pray fiercely. Insist that God listen. God wants your honesty.
II
But now, let’s also learn that God has given us some reserves to go on when it feels as though He is not listening. When bad things happen to good people, they find that God has given them experiences and memories to keep them going.
When you read this psalm, look at both the downers and the uppers. Back and forth, words of despair, then words of memory and of hope. Several times back and forth, up and down, the Psalmist first feeling so bad and so alone, but then he remembers. He remembers that God was there for the people of Israel in the past. He remembers that God brought him safely through his childhood. He remembers that God rescued him from other dangers. And so every time he goes down, there is something planted deep in his memory that brings him back up. Every time he is tempted to give up on God, he thinks of a moment when God didn’t give up on him. I think of the spiritual that goes, “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. Sometimes I’m almost to the ground, oh, yes, Lord.”
You see, our problem is that we live in the here and now. We live in this moment. We want things to be the way we want them, now. Right now. We don’t remember what God has done in the past, and so we don’t trust him for the future.
You know the old saying that God answers prayer in three ways? That God answers prayer with ”Yes” or “No” or “Wait?” Well, I heard the other day a little take-off on the idea of waiting. What if prayer was like those voice mail menus you get on the telephone: “You have reached heaven’s prayer center. Your call is important to us. If you are calling to praise the Lord, press 1. If you are calling to confess your sins, press 2. If you are calling to intercede for a sick friend, press 3. If you are calling to ask for something for yourself, press 4.” All right, let’s press 4. “If your call is for a spiritual gift, press 1. If your call is for guidance, press 2. If your request is for patience, press 911.” Well, you get that we are to wait and see what God will do. Most of all, wait and remember what God has already done. When bad things happen to good people, good people draw on the reserves of memory to get them through while they wait.
Another friend of mine lost his wife after a long bout with cancer; it was a terrible, devastating time. We were all stunned when not long thereafter his adult daughter also contracted cancer and died. Now my friend was a man of prayer. But who really could pray coherently in a time like that? Who could get out anything but cries of pain and despair? Later, however, my friend told some of us that in those dark hours there came flooding back into his mind Scripture verses he had learned a long time earlier, verses which he thought he had forgotten, but now, in the moment of need, they were a resource, a presence, and a power.
Memory. We need to touch our memories of the goodness and the love of God, because when bad things happen to good people, we may be so caught up in the grip of the moment that we don’t see the God who has already been there for us. But if we remember what He has already done, we will know that He will not forget us, and we can wait.
III
But finally, let’s also recognize that spiritual pain is like many other forms of sickness. You may have to hit rock bottom before you can start back up. You may have to deteriorate before you can heal. And it may be that sometimes God appears not to hear us, God seems to stay at a distance from us, in order to force us to know how much we need Him.
Did you notice, as we read this Psalm, that the Psalmist seems to get a little more desperate, a little more frantic, with each speech? The more he cries out, the more he deteriorates. If I were doing a psychological profile on this man, I would say that he is clinically depressed. He began by complaining to God that God seems very far away. But then his next word is much worse:
But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people. All who see me mock at me.
Pretty bad. Now, keep going. Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does. First the Psalmist felt unheard by God; then he felt scorned and mocked by everybody; and now his anxiety gets so bad that he has physical symptoms:
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws ... My hands and feet have shriveled; I can count all my bones.
Isn’t that horrible? Do you know what that feels like? Have you ever felt a load so heavy that you just feel all poured out and wasted? Exhausted and drained? Despair is physically draining. And, in fact, if you’ve been hit by a load of bad stuff, you will get so tired that you will be vulnerable to almost anything.
But the point is that sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we can start back up. Like the alcoholic or the drug user who has to get so needy before he will admit that he needs help, in much the same way, God answers us with silence until we admit how much we need Him.
Can it be that if God seems silent, it is that God’s silence is a part of His strategy to reach us? Can it be that God may actually send us to the edge of hell, the edge of separation, because He sees that we are convinced that we can do for ourselves? That we have never admitted that we need Him? When bad things happen to good people, maybe it is precisely because we think we are good, and we trust so much in our own goodness, but we need to find out who is in charge. When bad things happen to good people, God is waiting for them to get off their goodness kicks and to come to Him in sheer faith.
Conclusion
But, friends, our reading of this Psalm would not be complete if we did not see that finally, in God’s own time and for God’s own purposes, God hears the cries of the desperate. God listens to the prayers of the anguished; in His own time, for His own purposes, He brings relief.
Finally the Psalmist is able to say,
For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.
God will bring relief. He does hear our cries. He will not leave us in pain forever. How do I know? Where is my evidence? I know because of someone else who spoke this Psalm, and spoke it in the most terrible moment in human history. I know because of a bad thing that happened to a good person, the best of persons. I know because Jesus Christ hung on a Cross, the best of us done in by the worst of us. Talk about bad things happening to good people! Nothing surpasses this: that the very Son of God, who knew no sin, was made to die a criminal’s death! And when that happened, what did He pray? What prayer came from His heart? This very psalm, these pointed words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even Jesus Christ suffered estrangement and distance from God, just as we do! Jesus Christ, at the very side of the Father, knew the awesome, terrible, complete, and utter loneliness of not being heard by God.
But ... but ... three days later he saw the travail of his soul and was satisfied. Three days later, God heard His cry and brought him to life. Three days later, His anguish was turned into victory. God heard His cries and brought Him through. Hallelujah!! And God will bring us through as well. God will act in the midst of the suffering of bad things to bring us through to life.
As a boy I would get in trouble with my father. I would plead and beg. I would clamor to get out of being punished; I thought that punishment was a bad thing happening to a rather good little boy. My father seemed to pay no attention to all my please. I would be angry that my father just wouldn’t hear me. But at the end of the day there was always his quiet climb up the stairs to my room, where he would talk with me and kneel and pray for me. And I would know, at the end of the day, that indeed I had been heard. And I was satisfied.
When bad things happen to good people, go ahead and complain, for God is big enough; draw on your memories of God’s mercy and wait; remember that He suffered, He died, but He is alive, and we will at last be satisfied with the Father’s presence.
