God is often found in lost hope

For the last couple of weeks, I've been reading through the book of Psalms in the bible. I have to confess, these early Psalms have left me wanting to reach into my bible, take hold of David and scream, "dude, you have to get a grip on yourself."

This morning's Psalm, Psalm 13, starts out with these words from David:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

And then this same Psalm, just a few sentences later, ends with these words from David:

I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

And that has been the theme of these early Psalms - David crying out with where are you God, followed quickly by oh wait, there you are.

This morning, though, the more I found myself wanting to skip ahead to the Psalms where David gets a little more stability in his faith, I felt God grabbing my hand and saying, no, you need to stay right here. I heard him saying this isn't about David - this is about you.

Bob Goff reminded me this morning God didn't want me to stay in Psalm 13 to scold me as much as he wanted me there to remind me.

God wanted me reminded that even a great King, a man with enough faith to defeat a giant, even that guy can have faith as up and down as a roller coaster. God is using David's story to remind me what an up and down story my own life has been.

I think the moral God wants me to see in that story is that the answer to every down I've ever experienced in life was the up I ultimately found in God.

I'm reminded this morning of the song Run to the Father. The first time I heard it several months ago, these words brought tears to my eyes:

I run to the Father
I fall into grace
I'm done with the hiding
No reason to wait
My heart needs a surgeon
My soul needs a friend
So I'll run to the Father
Again and again
​And again and again

It was that again and again and again and again that got me.

Because on the other end of each of those "agains" in my life, God has been there.

So this morning when I find myself asking David, "really, David, this again?"

I heard God - not David - answer yes - again - and I will be there waiting on him.