In 1969, Paul Simon wrote a powerful song which he and Art Garfunkel recorded in 1970. The expression of Paul’s heart in the song conveys the message that he would be a friend when friends could not be found; that he, himself, would be a bridge over his friend’s troubled water.
I was so struck by this thought yesterday as I listened to a lovely lady share how she had endured so many difficult things, felt alone so often, but God had revealed to her through a prayer team at our church that He had been her bridge every time over those troubled waters. She had not, in fact, been alone. God was there.
How many times have we felt abandoned during our hard times? And truthfully, many people do abandon us, but one thing I have begun to ask God in the last couple of years is that He would show me where He was during dark moments in my past. I, too, find that He has been my bridge, and that often the way He has done that was through others as they became “bridges” for me to walk on. My heart was moved to write these thoughts…
The Bridge
I hear the water below me
The power of its rushing
Stirs the fear within me
Yet the other side
Beckons me to keep walking
This bridge under my feet
Gives me strength
Although it doesn’t completely
Take my fears away Read more...
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Many times I find myself reading in the Psalms, and many times I find “myself” in the Psalms. Their beauty leads me to do what they themselves often recommend. Selah. Pause and think about it. Layers and layers of truth and richness. The entire range of human emotions. The entirety of the Psalms including the Psalms of David express a true picture of humanness. Love and hate. Joy and grief. Praise and cursing. Ah, David, a man after God’s own heart, unafraid to feel and express his heart.
One of my favorites is Psalm 42, a Psalm written to describe one’s yearning for God in the middle of distress. The depth and truth of the Psalmist’s longing resonates within my heart.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God. 2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
The picture is of a mature deer, not a Bambi, a powerfully beautiful animal thirsting, longing for running, moving, living water. And then the Psalmist declares, “God, that is how I long for you! My soul, my inner being, my emotions, long for an encounter with a living God.”
Maybe there are two ways we learn about thirst. One is by natural processes of our humanness. We need water to live and thrive. Secondly, once we experience the power of having our thirst satisfied, we are forevermore dissatisfied with any other experience.
Paralleling that human experience with our spiritual thirst, we are created to know God in an intimate way. We were made to run our spiritual fuel tanks on God-a-nol. Secondly, once we have tasted what it means to have God quench our inner thirst, we can no longer be satisfied with any thing or any experience that falls short of encountering the true living God.
What does it mean to experience a living God? Well, what does life mean? Life must be distinguished from death. Easy, huh? Well the definition of life includes the fact that it is identified by growth, by changes that originate internally. A living God moves, speaks, sees, hears, and touches. Encountering a living God causes us to live, to grow and change internally.
What is going on in the Psalmist’s heart in Psalm 42 as he declares his longing? Is it, at least in part, a feeling of abandonment? The Psalmist says “How long will it be before I see your face God?” That’s my interpretation of appearing before God. In His presence. Seeing His face. When we are able to see someone’s face, we can look into their eyes and they can look into ours and we can know much about what is in their heart. It is hard to hide your emotions when someone peers into your eyes. We have heard that the eyes are the window into the soul and maybe that is true.
The Psalmist’s emotions rose up to accuse him. “Where is your God?” His enemies rose up to accuse him. “Where is your God?” Can we also conclude that his friends accused him? He was breaking the law and failing in his commitments. His emotions said that God had abandoned him. He was mourning because of the oppression of the enemy. His circumstances said that God had abandoned him.
In verse nine, the Psalmist cries out to God, “Why have you forgotten me?” The Psalmist found himself disconnected, disappointed, discouraged, disquieted. Disconnected with God, others (I used to go with the multitude), and his own soul. He was experiencing a loss of fellowship with others. He was experiencing a loss of the form of worship he was used to. I used to keep the pilgrim’s feast with the multitude. (How do you know God apart from your traditions?)
There was a way that he could stoke the fire of his experience of God. He spoke to himself. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves, aloud even, of what the truth is. The Psalmist declared, “I will hope in God. I will praise him.” Then this word “yet” is there staring at us. Here is the commitment…
Even though I am overwhelmed emotionally… Even though I don’t feel you God… Even though I feel alone…
“It’s a curious thing about quests, isn’t it, Mr. Quirk?” she said. “The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”
I put the novel down.
It was one of those moments when I realized that something significant was about to happen, if I’d pause long enough to let it. If I would stop long enough to get the impact of the words.
The words tumbled within me. I felt drawn to them; to ponder them; to absorb more than their surface meaning.
The paradox of it struck me.Yes, how often do I, do we all actually, pursue something we want only to find that what we really need is quite different indeed? But somehow we are unable to find it without the journey itself which often proves rocky, curvy, dangerous, and on a surface glance, absolutely undesirable.
We have a goal, a desire, a drive.We aim at it.We head toward it, often in the only way we know how, but somehow, almost mystically along the journey, its pull on our hearts disappears. We find, in a way that looks to be accidental, what our hearts really needed.
How can it be that when we find ourselves in the darkest situations, “Yea, though I walk through the valley…” where the shadows are all around us, “of the shadow of death…”, and we initially feel our goal is just to get out of this awful place, that suddenly we can experience God along the way, “I will fear no evil…”, finding that He is with us? “for He is with me.” Read more...
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In 1969, Paul Simon wrote a powerful song which he and Art Garfunkel recorded in 1970. The expression of Paul’s heart in the song conveys the message that he would be a friend when friends could not be found; that he, himself, would be a bridge over his friend’s troubled water.
