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How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all humanity! Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave? Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked, how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations, the taunts with which your enemies, Lord, have mocked, with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one. Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:46-52)

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Psalm 89 is a lovely, soaring Psalm.\xa0 Beautiful things are said of who God is: a God of righteousness, faithfulness, and loving kindness who has created the world, subdued all chaos, and made a covenant with his people.

The Psalm spends long verses explaining the faithfulness of the Lord.\xa0 It spends long verses describing the covenant made with King David and his descendants: how even if those sons of David were unfaithful to the Old Testament law\u2014that is, the covenant made at Saini\u2014how God would be faithful to his new covenant, made with David, even still.\xa0 God\u2019s faithfulness is everlasting.\xa0 Eternal.\xa0 Nothing can break it.\xa0 And God\u2014who does not lie, the psalmist points out\u2014made this promise to David, unconditionally, to ensure that David\u2019s line would continue forever.

But then God broke his promise.\xa0

Or at least, it sure did seem that way to the psalmist writing this song.\xa0 A dramatic turn comes quite suddenly upon us as the psalmist presents us with the devastation and abandonment experienced by God\u2019s people.\xa0 The psalmist demands to know: how long will this continue, Lord?\xa0 Your promise to David is everlasting\u2014so will this devastation end before the end of time?\xa0 If you\u2019re faithful\u2014it should, and soon\u2014we human people don\u2019t live forever!\xa0 The Psalmist further demands to know: where is this going to happen?\xa0 Where is your former great love to be displayed?\xa0 Because it certainly was not evident to the psalmist in any space he could see.

We Christian people hold on to a Christian hope of a future of life with Christ.\xa0 But when our present life and situation on earth does not look like we hope it to in heaven, these questions are pertinent.\xa0 It\u2019s great we have a future hope\u2014but that doesn\u2019t mean that we can\u2019t ask God if he will not show his love in our time and in our space.\xa0 We can pray alongside the psalmist in asking: \u201cwill your kingdom not come on earth as it is in heaven so that we might see it and live in it in our times and spaces, O Lord?\u201d

\u201cHow is it that we can say such bold things to God though?\u201d you might wonder.\xa0 Because it is God\u2019s own faithfulness that\u2019s on the line, that\u2019s how.\xa0 And, because it is ultimately a question about God and not about us, well: perhaps this is exactly why Jesus came to bear out the final lines of this psalm as his own\u2014to allow the mockery of the nations, the wrath of God, and the abandonment felt by God\u2019s people to fall on him instead.\xa0 Only in the ministry of Jesus, therefore\u2014in his death and resurrection\u2014do we finally find an answer to this psalm.\xa0

But we don\u2019t live that answer of Jesus\u2019 resurrection life in fullness yet, do we?\xa0 It remains only a future hope.\xa0 And so in each new generation, including ours, we find that we too have to take up our cross, along with the words of this psalm, and journey together with Jesus toward our own death as we wait for God\u2019s faithfulness to be proved once again in our own time and space.

Maybe that isn\u2019t a happy end or neat resolution to this devotion.\xa0 But it is where the psalm ends and indeed where Book III of the Psalter ends: by placing our petition before God\u2014demanding that his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, soon\u2014and waiting for his response.\xa0 \u201cAmen and amen.\u201d

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