Nine Years – amazing!

On July 8th, Diane and I celebrated nine years of marriage (albeit in different cities, as I was out of town with the Glenwood Camp). Over a belated anniversary dinner this weekend, we thought about how far we had come, how far the Lord has brought us, and it is simply amazing to see what God has done.

Some couples have hard first years of marriage and they realize that in the midst of those first years. Some don’t have hard times much at all. I think our first years were very hard, but we didn’t know any different – we just thought it was normal. But looking at where we are now, I can clearly see a mighty work of God, and I am so thankful for how good marriage can be when you work at it and when you have the grace of God at work.

Broken of much independence, I have come to trust and depend on Diane as my friend and partner in life. Broken of the illusions that we had about our ability to love one another well on our own, we have each grown in depending on Christ to be our love and our hope. Broken of fears of being known, we are growing in intimacy and communication.

I could not have imagined that marriage could have gotten so much better and that we would still have so much opportunity to grow.

And how about my smokin’ hot wife? Prettier than that hot July day that I married her, and growing more beautiful to me every year.

Fruit will come, hang in there!

Six weeks ago I preached on John 15, the parable of the vine and the branches (click here to listen/download). For my sermon I used a live tomato plant and an artificial Christmas tree, and I urged us to abide in Christ, in His life, and that if we did, fruit would come.

And then I took my tomato plant home and I waited and watched... and waited.... and watched.... as it bore flower after flower, but no fruit. I watered it. It was planted in good soil. But no fruit. Finally, in desperation, I went ahead and hung it upside down from our front porch, because I had planted it in a bucket for that very reason. More weeks went by, and still no fruit – flowers yes, but no tomatoes.

But this week ….. fruit! Small, barely able to be called tomatoes, but still, fruit! And I think that there is more to come.

Some of you may be struggling to see Spirit fruit in your life. You’ve been doing your best to rest in Christ, to trust Him as your life, but there’s nothing to show for it. Hang in there. Remain in Christ, and fruit will come.

You may feel like you have been doing everything in your power to remain, but life is just getting more and more away from you, that your world has been turned upside down. Hang in there, and remember - it took turning upside down for my tomato plant to bear fruit, too.

Remain in Christ, and you will bear fruit.

Psalms to the rescue!

In response to recent blog posts and prayer letters, many of my friends have written to encourage me, and I know that many have been praying or me. Interestingly, most of them have included encouragement from the Psalms, urging me to reorient my heart and my mind to the truth of God.

Psalm 27 has been prayed for me, that I would see the face of God in the land of the living and that the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear. Psalms 137 and 138 have been given to me, urging me to look for how the Israelites moved from the despair of Babylon to becoming bold and stouthearted. I have been given Psalm 46, that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Is it because my friends know that I love the Psalms? Maybe. But even more, the Psalms continue to offer real responses to real life, while always pointing us back to the truth of God. Reorientation, turning to a correct alignment and focus.

Hebrews 12:2 urges us to fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. A friend recently preached on that passage, and over and over he exhorted his listeners to look to God, not to our problems. When we focus on our lives, our issues, our sin, our fears, we lose balance and perspective. But to fix our eyes on Jesus, reoriented to the truth of who God is, brings correct understanding.

Hedging my bets

In thinking through my consistent  struggle with fear, I have discovered a nagging seed of doubt that consistently grows and bears the fruit of fear. It’s an age-old question, one that many have struggled with – basically, why do bad things happen to good people? I know that being a Christian does not exempt me from suffering or pain, though my life has been relatively free of both. I know that people who are deeply committed to Jesus fall dead of heart attacks, die in car wrecks, have homes knocked down by tornados. And so this knowledge often trumps what I read in God’s Word.

For example, Psalm 91 is full of assurances of the Lord’s presence. The Lord is described as a fortress and a refuge, a God that we can trust in all things, the God who will save us from things that will ensnare us. It says that we will not fear the terror of night or the arrow that flies by day, and that no harm will befall you. When I read that Psalm, I am emboldened. I have the courage to do things that I normally would shrink back from.

But then I remember the bad things that have happened to good people and I feel like it’s silly to trust the Bible at face value. So I read the Bible and in my heart of hearts, I believe, but in my flesh, I hedge my bets, not willing to entrust all of my life to God. At the root of this is my desire to be in control. If I can worry about what might happen, if I can foresee it and then prevent it, then even if God didn’t come through, I would still be OK. For me, fear and worry give the illusion of being in control, which is safer than walking by faith.

My prayer is that I would stop hedging my bets, acknowledging God’s love and His control over all things, and that His word would lead me to greater faith, an anchor in the midst of my ups and downs.

Tired of fear

We all have a default in our flesh, a mode of reacting that we turn to when life gets out of control. For me, that mode has been fear. I remember crying and crying in fear of any number of ailments when I was younger, from gum disease to my knee locking up. I feared dogs from a young age. I remember a period of weeks when I imagined that a boy from the next neighborhood over was patrolling our neighborhood on his dirtbike, looking to beat me up, and cringed in fear in my house. When we first moved to Glenwood, I was afraid to walk the dogs, and as we have had children, my anger in the morning when they wake up early is generated by my fear of being tired. I don’t know where that seed got planted and how its roots got so deep, but it seems as though fear is, if not a constant companion, a very familiar visitor.

I think that I indulge it because thinking about what I am afraid of, and what could happen to me, gives an illusion that I am in control. If I can imagine every unseen danger or possibility, I won’t be surprised (goes the thinking).

But it wears me out. I think of the hours and hours that I have spent walking in fear, worrying about things that never came to pass, and I know that I’ve wasted a lot of time. And I can see that I have passed this default of fear to my children, a negative inheritance for their soul. And I don’t know how to beat it.

Yesterday some dealers down the street rode by on a moped and yelled something at me as I set up the yard for a cookout. When my friend and I drove by their house a few minutes later, they yelled again. And now I don’t want to walk my neighborhood. I don’t want to go to the community garden because I am afraid. Did they yell at me because they saw a police officer stop and talk with me on Thursday? Did they know that he was telling me about their activities, giving me a heads up and asking me to let him know if I knew anything? Were they now looking at me as a threat, a snitch? And so home doesn’t feel safe, even though I don’t know what they said, but I have filled in the blank for them.

I’m tired of fear, and I just don’t know how to move forward and be free from it.

Becoming the answer

Each week at our dinner for the homeless and poor at Grace, we have slips of paper for guests to write out their prayer requests, which are then typed up and emailed out. As I read through two weeks worth of prayer requests, my heart was stirred by the simplicity of the prayers – a job, a place to stay, healing, deliverance from addiction to drugs and alcohol, restoration of family relationships, provision for family members. These are things that I take for granted, things that sometimes seem so “normal” that they feel like rights. I have always had a home, a stable family, provision for every need, a car. But I didn’t earn any of that – it was all gift.

I was also stirred by the depth of the prayer requests – wisdom with how to use time and money, wisdom in raising children, a deeper understanding of the Bible, greater faith, a deeper relationship with Christ and greater obedience to Him. And I long for our church to be a place where these prayers our answered – we offer classes for parents on raising children, solid Biblical preaching each week, and we have wise men and women who could teach young Christians what it means to live life centered on Christ. There are businessmen and businesswomen who have an ability to create jobs and businesses that could sustain some of our friends.

I think that this will only happen as more people from our church attend the dinners on Wednesdays and build bridges across racial and economic divides so that our Wednesday night guests feel like they have friends waiting for them on Sunday morning, someone to walk into church with and to sit with. This will only happen as people from our church begin to feel the pain and longing of those without jobs and are stirred with compassion to do something about it.

I think that there are people at Grace who could be used as God’s answer to these prayers, they just don’t know it. I pray that God would do a new work in us as a Body, stirring even more of us to this work that He has for us.

A prescription for rest

This is from an email I sent to a friend who is frazzled, burning the candle on both ends, and not seeing any time or space to restore their soul. It's advice that I try to heed, too:

What do you mean you don't have time to rest? Remember our convo about what is restful for you? Resting is something you have to MAKE time for or you will be useless in your work (well, not useless, but you will not enjoy it but will simply survive it). Margin never creates itself - something in life always fills the empty spaces if we are not vigilant.
1) Go to bed 1/2 hour earlier - this takes discipline and focus.
2) Make time to spend with God, reading the Bible and praying.
3) Make time to do things that are fun for you.
4) Be aware of counterfeit rest - for me this looks like ,"If I lay on the couch and watch TV for a couple of hours, that will restore my soul. " "If I surf the web for electronics deals, that will restore my soul." "If I balance our online banking on mvelopes, that will restore my soul." Those things are fine in small doses, but listening to music, reading a book, being still and quiet actually restore my soul in significant ways.
5) Exercise - unplug from your day and move your body!
I find that if I do these things, life is more balanced. Love, marsh

Walk with the wise

Today I had the chance to learn about being faithful to Christ, and faithful as a parent; I learned about the perseverance of love in the midst of heartache; and I learned about the power of Christ to do in us what we can never do on our own. All in a 30-minute conversation with a co-worker.

Wisdom seems to be one of those things that you can’t often get apart from life experience. You most often gain wisdom by going through life and paying attention to God and paying attention to patterns and themes in your heart and in life around you. Yet you can also gain wisdom by observing others’ faithfulness in the ordinary, peace in the midst of chaos. You can gain wisdom by listening to others, especially if they give you the gift of sharing what is real in their lives, the tragedies as well as the joys. That is what my friend gave me today. As she shared her story of loving one of her children, I feel like I was given tools to be a better parent. I was given pictures of the Gospel lived out in the here and now that I won’t forget. And I grew in wisdom.

Interestingly, she was not trying to sound wise or trying to teach me anything; she was just responding when I asked how her child was doing. Wise people don’t have to convince you of their wisdom because wisdom is a byproduct of faithfulness, not the goal. Wisdom is a fruit of abiding in Christ, and today I had the chance to receive the gift of God’s redeeming work in her family’s life.

Fullness

I often live my life from a position of lack. I find myself thinking about what I don’t have, what I haven’t done, what I should have done better.

But those of us who are in Christ have no business living in lack, because God is a God of fullness, a truth illuminated in the first two chapters of Colossians. First we learn that God had all His fullness dwell in Christ (1:19), and then Paul talks about presenting the Word of God to the Colossians in all its fullness (1:25). Paul says again in 2:9 that in Christ, all the fullness of  Deity lives in bodily form. Jesus has fullness. The Word of God has fullness. God Himself has fullness. All of that makes sense to me.

But then Paul says, “You have been given fullness in Christ.” (2:10) When I read it, it was one of those “guy says wrong thing in the bar and the record playing on the jukebox goes sccrrrriitch while everything stops” kind of moments. “I have been given fullness in Christ?” scccrrriiitch

I shouldn’t have been so surprised – Paul prays for the Ephesians to be filled to the measure of the fullness of God and says that maturity in Christ entails our attaining the full measure of the fullness of Christ. John 1:16 says that from the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another.

This truth of fullness has been quietly reshaping my outlook on what I need to be OK. When my kids are misbehaving, and I feel a lack of control, I have been given fullness. When the latest flashy gadget outpaces my spending budget, I have been given fullness. When my basement floods and the carpet has to go, I have been given fullness. When I feel forgotten or insignificant, I have been  given fullness. When I am at the end of my strength and one more need presents itself, I have been given fullness.

Fullness of life, of joy, of peace, of hope. Fullness is mine already.

Carpet? We don't need no stinking carpet!

Greensboro was hit by a torrential downpour this evening (flooding, cars stranded), and so I called home to check in with Diane and she said, “There’s water in the basement,” which was an understatement. Water had flooded several inches deep in our garage and come under the door, and all the carpet was soaked (over 700 square feet). My trusted advisor Nick Loflin didn’t think it was salvageable (I think he was right), and so we proceeded to rip out the carpet and padding, assisted by neighbors Randy Lewkowicz and Gene Brown, as Suzanne and Diane shop-vacced the cement beneath.

In the end, we are thinking of varnishing the cement floor and putting down some area rugs (it’s the hip thing to do now), and maybe this will be a blessing in disguise, Extreme Flood Makeover. The chance to see the love of our friends and neighbors in action (as Nick did not leave until 10:30 p.m.) was such a blessing for us, too.

It was also neat to uncover a cement patch in which Diane and I and the Lewkowic'z’s had put our initials back in 2003. Great memories of good friends helping us live the dream here in Glenwood, sharing our home with us for about 3 years. All in all, if you had to have flooding, this turned out as well as it could.

Frank Sinatra theology

Lately I have been wrestling with what I call Frank Sinatra theology (or maybe it’s Bing Crosby) – do-be-do-be-do. There is such a pull in me to “do” things for the Lord, to live a Kingdom-minded life. I see the brokenness of the world around me, from neighbors on Silver to families in my church, and feel the need to get busy fixing. And yet in my times with the Lord, I am learning the lessons of abiding, of waiting, of trusting the Lord to be the one doing the work.

While I know that resting in Christ does not equal inertia, I also know that sometimes my “kingdom work” can look and sound spiritual but be generated by my flesh. This morning I was reading in Colossians 3:1-3, and Paul tells us to set our hearts and our minds on heaven, on things above, not on earthly things. It was interesting to me that my mental distractions that immediately sprung up were not material items I wanted or sexual temptations or anger towards someone who had wronged me, but rather people and issues around me that I ought to help with. I see other churches who are doing more than my church, and I think I need to generate more programs for the poor. I remember how harried and exhausted I was when we were seeing tons of financial assistance cases last year and I shudder, but then I think, “At least I was doing something."

I’ve also been studying Mark, and I have been intrigued by how much time Jesus spends talking about God’s Kingdom and how little time He spends fixing people. It seems that if the Kingdom advances in the lives of people, many issues of the world begin to take care of themselves.

And so right now, I think that I am being called to listen to the voice that says abide and trust. To seek Christ and His Kingdom, but not seek to make the Kingdom come. To wait and listen, even if it feels unproductive, and believe that God will move me when it is time. Maybe I need to change my listening genre to blues for a while and hang out with “Be Be” King (sorry, that was a pretty bad pun, I know).

Remaining in Christ sermon

This is the “teaser” I sent out to our church last week in advance of Sunday’s sermon. If you want to hear the message, click the link for Life in the Vine (teaser 2: my main sermon props were an artificial Christmas tree and a tomato plant).

“As I listen to the rain pour down this evening, I am smiling. My gardens are getting exactly what they need, and soon, I'm going to see some veggies forming on the vine. I love watching as week by week, the plants do their thing, growing taller and greener. The fruit simply comes as a product of the plant staying rooted and bearing what it was created to bear.

“Do you believe that bearing fruit for Christ could possibly be as simple for us as bearing fruit is for my veggies? Join us this Sunday as we look at John 15:1-8 and talk about abiding in Christ and bearing fruit, maturing as His disciples.”

Click link for the podcast: Life in the Vine

Also, for further enjoyment and musical accompaniment to the sermon, download this awesome version of  Be Still My Soul, a hymn that speaks to God’s sufficiency (podcast is free, song costs 99 cents).

Who knew Marsh could rap?

To close out the year at tutoring, I did a free-style rap for the kids. Enjoy!

Running because of freedom

Students here at Rockbridge have been practicing how to share the good news (gospel) by taking their peers through “proxe stations” which are simply interactive ways for people to experience both their need for Christ and the hope that He offers.

One student took someone through a station called Extreme Heart Makeover, which basically gives the chance for people to identify areas in their heart that, if given the chance, they would like remade – things like anger, pride, selfishness, etc. As the participant marked several heart areas that they wished were different, my student told them, in a nutshell, that the answer is for them to ask forgiveness, repent, and try harder to not do those things.

On hearing this, my firsts reaction was frustration, because “trying harder to not do bad things” is not really the heart of the good news. The gospel tells us that we are unable to do good, unable to remake our hearts, apart from Christ, and that God has freely given us the forgiveness to begin again and the power to walk in new ways as we trust His life in us. I cringe when people reduce following Jesus to “trying harder” or “doing better.”

But as we prayed for this student and I thought about the anger and the heaviness that I sensed in her, I realized that she must believe that her righteousness is based on her performance and that her fear of moral failure must mute her experience of  the power and presence of God’s love for her.

And God brought to mind one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Psalm 199:32 – “I run in the paths of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” My prayer for her, and for myself, became a plea for God to lead us to an obedience that stems from an experience of His love and goodness. Running in His commands because of  freedom, not in hope of attaining it.

Learning to rest and receive

While it feels a little surreal to be here at Rockbridge, surrounded by college students and InterVarsity-focused ministry, my passion for college students and for the Gospel still burns, and I had the privilege of talking with one student for an hour or so today. He reminded me of myself when I was 22 – he longs to love Jesus above all things, is frustrated by recurring patterns of sin, and seems to believe that if he just tries hard enough, he can get the point of being good and acceptable to God. Worship is often not a joy for him but rather a tug of war between his wandering thoughts and his expectations of himself in that moment.

As I listened to him, I was thankful for his sincere desire to seek the Lord, but I was also tired for him, watching him work so hard to “get it right” for Jesus. Getting off of this treadmill of working hard is one of the joys of abiding in Christ. A strawberry plant doesn’t work and strain to make strawberries appear. You don’t hear peach trees screaming in the pains of childbirth as the fruit is formed on their limbs. Instead, the fruit simply comes as a course of nature as long as the branches stay connected to the vine. I can’t produce the fruit that I long for. I cannot make myself more patient or loving or peaceful. I cannot make people love Jesus. I can only abide in Christ, trusting Him to make good on His promise that if I abide in Him, I will bear much fruit – not produce much fruit but bear it - for the glory of the Gardener, the Father.

And so as I prayed for my new friend, I asked God to let him receive the life and love that Christ has for him and to rest in His finished, loving work. I believe in my heart that He will.

So, who am I?

I am a branch.

This simple concept has been the most influential spiritual principle in my life for the past 10 years. In 1998 I was introduced to a book by Andrew Murray called "Abide in Christ", which contains 31 reflections on the parable of the vine from John 15. I have read this book almost once a year, and I continue to be refreshed, encouraged, and convicted by the freedom that comes from re-learning my position as one dependent on the life of God given through Christ.

The premise of Jesus’ parable is very simple – just as a branch is dependent on the vine for life and sustenance, so all people are designed to be dependent on God as our life in all things. And yet, like most of Jesus’ teachings, the simple becomes very profound if you consider its deeper implications.

It’s not just that I need Jesus for forgiveness of my sins. It’s not just that I need Jesus to help me when things get too hard. It’s not just that I need Jesus to understand hard passages in the Bible or to love prickly people. I need the life of God in every moment, and the degree to which I remember that truth and rely on Him is tied to the degree that I experience the power, joy, and peace that come with His presence.

It would be easy for someone like me to make this principle into a law, measuring constantly how well I am abiding or have been abiding, chastising myself for failing to abide. But that quickly becomes trusting myself or my ability to abide instead of trusting Christ. The truth is, I abide not because I am faithful or because I read a book or pray a prayer. I abide in Christ because of His work on my behalf, His life, death, and resurrection. Whether I am aware of my position in Him at all times is irrelevant to whether or not I am secure in Christ. But when I do pause to remember, in any moment, that I am in Christ and that He has given Himself completely to me, there is an awareness of grace in every moment and of a life that is deeper than my feelings or circumstances, and that brings great freedom.

Being me

Most of the time I am OK with who I am. I mean, I feel like I’m a good dad, learning to be a good pastor, and I have some  good ideas about life and ministry. But sometimes when I am around people who are not like me, who think deeper thoughts and have more organized visions for life and ministry, I begin to wonder again if I have what it takes.

For example, the other week a local church told me about their new tutoring program that they were launching, complete with a leadership team of 12, a partnership with their neighborhood school, and a way to track the academic progress of their kids. I laughed and thought about how we started our program by handing out flyers at bust stops in my neighborhood, but behind that laugh was a sense of feeling like I didn’t do the program “right” or as well from the start. And even though our program currently has 50 kids and over 100 volunteers, a part of me still describes it internally as “rinky dink.”

Or riding up to an IV event recently, I was in the car with two extroverts, and I made a comment about needing time and pace to myself, and I realized, “I don’t want to be like that. I want to be the person who likes to be around people all the time.” Or sitting in a discussion with three friends who love to think deeply about theology, and thinking, “Man, the things I think about spiritually seem so simple.”

But my point in this post is not to whine about what I’m not or for people to tell me how great I am. It’s to address the lie that says who I am is not OK. The Lord has made me and gifted me to bring something to the table that others don’t and vice versa. Learning to abide in Christ, to trust Him as my life and my source frees me from having to be anything but who I am. Preoccupation with myself takes me away from preoccupation with Jesus, and for me, that is a quick road to a life that becomes all about me, which I have found to be no life at all.

Psalm 22 - life emerges

But just like the Psalmist, we don't stop with suffering, but instead we move forward, remembering who God is. God is holy, and we worship. God is enthroned, and we worship. God has moved in the past and been faithful, and we trust.

We move on, praying on behalf of those who feel less than human, those who feel rejected and mocked, those who equate God's presence and favor with their performance, and we ask God to remind them of His presence, to reveal to them His constant love for them, even since birth.

We pray against fear, against enemies, against the lies of the evil one that attack and gore our faith. We pray against the things that feel to strong for us and those we know, and we ask that God reveal His goodness, that He bring us to a place of seeing that He has answered our cry in the cross of Christ and His resurrection.

And then we move to worship, instructing our soul in who God is: the God who listens and does not despise us in our suffering; the God who leads us into worship; the God whose name is sure; the God who satisfies the poor; the God who commands the worship of rich and poor alike; the God who will be worshipped by all the nations; the God who has done all that is needed to answer the suffering and brokenness of our world.

God doesn't always fix our suffering in the way that we want Him to. He doesn't always heal this side of heaven. He didn't spare His own son from suffering and death, and He doesn't always spare us. But the promise is that on the other side is life, life, and more life. Christ's suffering won life for the nations, for generations to come, and somehow in the midst of pain and struggle, the life of God continues to emerge, leading others to worship.

Rewrite of "Walking Away"

I've been re-reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser, one of my favorite books on writing from journalism school, and that has led me to try and rewrite this recent post. I was able to cut over 50 words, and I think that it reads a little more crisply.


She was a pitiful sight, sitting in her wheelchair just outside the hotel room – hair askew, left eye blackened from a punch three nights previous, wearing pajamas and no shoes. She’d been attacked in the camp where she lives, down by the railroad tracks, and now she was facing her last night at the hotel. I’d stopped by to bring her some clothes and food, trying to show her that I did care about her, even though I had no plan for how to help her. She had quickly left the transitional housing where we had placed her in March, and our church could not continue to pay for her hotel room. When I mentioned the possibility of going to a domestic violence shelter in a nearby city, she exploded. “I can’t go to another shelter situation! I’ve been out here in this chair for 10 years, getting murdered, and you want me to go to another shelter?!?”

She continued to yell at me. “What if I was your sister or your mom or your daughter? What would you do then!?”
“I’d bring them home to live with my family,” I thought, but I kept that to myself.

It seemed that what she really wanted me to do was find her an apartment and pay for it each month indefinitely, and I told her that I could not do that.

“It’s all about the money, isn’t it?” she continued. “Jesus didn’t care about money! Jesus cared about people! You can’t look at me in this situation and say you can’t do anything. You can’t be a Christian and leave me like this!” I told her goodbye and walked away, not sure what else I could say or why I should stay further.

My thoughts have been haunted by her in the days since. Should I have brought her home with me, moving my son into my daughters’ room to create a space for her? Didn’t the early Church grow because Christians would take in those that no one else loved or wanted? If anyone is the “least of these”, she is. The Lord has seemed strangely silent as I wrestled and worried, wondered and prayed. And sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out to follow Jesus in the hardest places of the world, because when I get there, I feel like I lack either the insight or the courage to act for transformation.

Psalm 22 - praying it into our soul

We can use this Psalm the same way that God's people have used it for centuries, praying its truths into our hearts and lives here and now. You might not be experiencing suffering right now in your life, but if you look at our world, I think you will agree that there are many people who, given their circumstances could very well wonder if God had abandoned them. We can pray the opening verses on their behalf, on behalf of the broken world. Those verses have been coursing through my heart and mind these past two weeks as I have looked around our city, watching the suffering of the homeless and of people in our church who have lost loved ones and who have lost jobs. Cancer continues to attack, death seems to be winning, and friends of mine are struggling to have hope and peace, struggling to engage God in the midst of pain.

Thursday of this week was a day that just pounded on my soul. Not for what was happening to me directly but for what was happening to people around me, near me, in my life. The day seemed marked by desperate situations, brokenness, confusion. It was cold and rainy, and the problems that kept coming in on my cell phone and to the door of the church were larger than I could fix and more painful than I could bear. And the question, "where are you, Lord?" seemed to repeat over and over in my head.

Whether you are going through the suffering or praying for someone else, we can cry out to God, asking where He is. As I studied this passage with some InterVarsity colleagues recently, one of my co-staff began to weep as she read the Psalm aloud, remembering the sufferings in her life and in the lives of those she loves.