A Refuge in the Midst of Reality

When our hearts, souls and minds are deeply troubled, knowledge of God’s secure future is the soil in which confidence grows.

I often feel compassion fatigue. How often can one heart break? I think of Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Gaza, Haiti, racism, global migration and immigration, health care inequities, political dysfunction, culture wars that some are predicting could lead to civil war.

In addition, I frequently experience the limits of my intellectual abilities, especially with reference to creating public policy that effectively solves humanity’s major problems. We can’t agree on facts. We can’t settle on processes. We can’t agree on proper outcomes. Our diverse worldviews and theological presuppositions separate us. They are often the rationale for hostility. 

This leaves me wondering: Is there a way forward? Is there a light we can walk toward in our common humanity? In my worst moments, I wonder: Where is God? Can he be trusted? The Bible says that Jesus defeated the principalities and powers of this world (Colossians 2:15), but to honest eyes, the powers—with their brutal, dehumanizing violence—seem to be winning. 

I feel in my bones a lyric from Brian Wilson’s “Love and Mercy”: A lotta people out there hurtin' and it really scares me…love and mercy is what you need…love and mercy to you and your friends.

The powers are especially in our face during this presidential election year. Elections are consequential, of course. What should we do when facing something consequential and feeling powerless at the same time?

I am hardly the first God-seeker to ask that question. Asaph, an Old Testament worship leader for the people of God, came to the point of having an intellectual, emotional and spiritual watershed moment: Would he keep believing and trusting? Or would he toss up his hands and quit? In our present language, we might say he was deconstructing. 

In Asaph’s sincere observation, life was unfair, and God-talk provided little-to-no relief. Bad people prospered and had power, while good people suffered and were trampled on. If alive today, Asaph would have wondered about the kinds of people who have political power and what it means for the future of the world. 

Not every politician is wicked, of course. Many of them seek to do good, but they run smack into the powers that perpetuate some measure of evil until Jesus comes again. Even with that charitable view, nearly everyone I know senses that something is disturbingly broken socially and politically, and we have little power to do anything about it. 

A Place of Refuge

In Psalm 73, Asaph reveals the way forward. 

First, it is fine to feel what is real:

When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

But then we put real feelings of fear, anxiety, grievance or being hopelessly under siege in their proper, non-supreme place:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

That means even under duress, we are capable of being good citizens and loving our neighbors and enemies:

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

The daily news is alarming. Politicians use it to stoke fear and hatred. But:  

As for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

In Asaph’s place of refuge, in the safety of God’s shelter, our concerns do not go away, but they become situated in something more than screaming headlines. They find a context in the sure-to-be-accomplished purposes of God. We know the end of the story. The present scene, no matter how terrifying, is on its way out. 

When our hearts, souls and minds are deeply troubled, knowledge of God’s secure future is the soil in which confidence grows, real peace thrives, and joy becomes a power of its own. That joy keeps us in the game of life and allows us to stick to our vocation as followers of Jesus—God’s agents of repair.