My Life
6 min read
1 LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death.
— Psalm 88:1-3
The psalmist expresses faith and trust in God, despite the feeling that …
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
The psalmist feels that the LORD has rejected him and is hiding His face from him (verse 14). But he continues to cry out to the LORD in prayer (verses 1b, 2, 9b, 13).
If we cannot turn to God in our times of suffering, who can we turn to? And the reason for the psalmist’s confidence is expressed in a series of rhetorical questions that basically suggest that God’s glory and our praise cannot be demonstrated in death (verses 10-12).
But that is the twist. Everyone dies.
On the one hand, the psalmist exhibits incredible faith by praising God even through unimaginable suffering. He does so because He realizes that exulting in the glory of God through our praise is the very point of life.
On the other hand, the psalmist is caught in the dilemma of the prosperity gospel. If God does not rescue faithful believers in this life, what is there to praise God about? Where is the glory of God in the suffering and death of faithful believers?
And so the psalmist basically answers his own question. From an individual’s personal experience, the glory of God—to be the glory of God—can only be manifested through the goodness of life. That is, the glory of God can only be manifested if God has overcome death itself. The glory of God can only be manifested if God has overcome the suffering that is due to sin. And all suffering is due to sin. The glory of God can only be manifested if God has overcome sin.
And if none of that is true, then God doesn’t exist. But if none of that is true, and if God doesn’t exist, then this life is just a random sequence of pointless circumstances that somehow often leads to suffering and ultimately death. What hope is there in that.
To be sure, some atheists manufacture their own “gods” or philosophies in order to make life even remotely bearable. Most of them would not own up to that . But the smartest atheists know it’s true—without God, life has no meaning, and hope is, well, pointless.
I think one good thing about the postmodern era and the internet age is that people—young people, especially—understand the futility of atheism and postmodernism itself. The challenge for the church is to point people to the truth of Christ by living our lives with the powerful hope of eternal life and with the powerful message that Christ has overcome death.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
— 1 Corinthians 15:19
What a terrible witness that would be if our hope in Christ is just for this life.
Father, You are from everlasting to everlasting. We cannot even fathom Your eternal nature, but You have placed eternity in our hearts. But why do we live for this life, even if we believe in Christ? Forgive us. Set eternity in our hearts every day. Let our hope be in Christ and Christ alone every day. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
