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Singing Psalm 6 to break the disconnect

Singing Psalm 6 listening to break the disconnect

You are stuck between a flood of cares for all the troubles of all the people in the world and being afraid that you are coming up empty as someone who wants to help but feels tone deaf and unable to connect with people in their troubles.

You are overcome with sadness about merely rubbing shoulders with others. Most people you know, you know only to a point. It seems they can’t bring themselves to say what troubles them deeply. It feels almost too much to bear when you look in their eyes and sense fear and desperation on the inside.

If you are a child of an immigrant or are oppressed, you might feel overcome by nebulous, unarticulated high expectations can become melded with no direction, guidance, or means to achieve those expectations. This fusion is a recipe for walking through life trying to justify every breath you take.

That desperation or fear in the eyes of a brother or sister could be based on something that doesn’t even cross the mind of another.

The way a person is viewed and treated ought not be based on how rich or poor they are, the color of their skin, how attractive or unattractive they are. Criteria for friendship are not whether people have good health or poor health, whether they have a winsome, abrasive, or awkward personality. 

Although Jesus transcends all of these differences as we are one in Christ, individuals have not always understood that highlighting second and third level differences brings about segregated worship halls and disunity. This is a far cry from the unity that Jesus died to give us. 

At times disunity brings you to feel disconnected from Jesus, the one you love and who loved you first, and disconnected from his bride, his body, his church. These feelings seize you against your will and are enough to make you think you are going insane.

You push against them moaning and crying out: “Oh, Lord, remove my anxious cares and break the disconnect that is blinding me from seeing you clearly, depending on you to love others according to their needs.”

No one is listening. They are hiding.

It is hard to listen. But the Lord has heard.

And so you listen for their needs to break the disconnect.

Singing Psalm 6 needing help to break the disconnect

You thank the Lord for bringing it to mind that you need to ask good questions and listen well to each person he has put in your path and on your heart. You break the disconnect as you stop trying to take the whole world out of his hands. 

The Lord knows each person completely and helps you not to be overwhelmed but to bring to him their names and the concerns that you imagine are causing them the most stress, and to come to him yourself for help and rest.

You wake up sore and stiff. The antithesis of the flexible gymnast, you are thankful, with his help, that you can move at all. Indeed, you beckon him: “Be gracious, Lord — I waste away!” You are weary. You come to Jesus for rest.

With bold reasoning and wrestling, you break the disconnect by counting on the Lord in his steadfast love. He found you and showed you how to need his help. You found him and now desperately ask him to send help! You plead with him not to deny your request or delay responding, yet trusting him to do what seems good to him (and therefore IS good).

The struggle intensifies and death, the grief-laden doorway to the most joyfully welcomed life eternal, seems imminent. You simply want your life and your death to be glorifying to the triune God.

When shame seizes those who oppose the Lord and, dismayed, they are turned back the way they came, you pray they would abandon their previous course and turn to the Lord away from whatever else they hope will give them satisfaction.

Whether he still has good work for you to do here that he has prepared for you to do in advance, or whether he takes you home having completed that work here, it’s alright with you.

When you are ashamed of your weakness in mind, body, and heart, you cry to the Lord not to chasten you in wrath but in love. Seeing how you can at times be thoughtless of the needs of others, this, your need, drives you in tears to seek the Lord’s help for new ideas, new ways to break the disconnect.

Human friends can provide comfort and service and attempt to meet felt needs but are usually unable to meet unspoken needs. You make it your aim to imitate his perfect ability to recognize real needs and the faithfulness to meet them. He is with you and will break the disconnect through you as you bring your needs and theirs to his throne of grace.

Loving them as Jesus loves you, you plead with the Lord also not to chasten them in wrath but in loving kindness and tender mercy. They learn to need help to break the disconnect. He brings them to himself so that they too would seek his face and hear his voice.

June 29-July 2, 2022


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