How long, O Lord? Jennifer Waddle - Ministry Development Team
As the war Ukraine continues, and our Jewish brothers and sisters experience unimaginable hardship, I imagine they are asking heart-wrenching questions of which the answers are unknown.
How long will this senseless assault continue?
Has the rest of the world forgotten us?
How much more death and destruction will there be?
Will our enemy be victorious over us?
From afar, there’s no way to truly understand the atrocities our precious brothers and sisters are going through. Only through the lens of empathy and compassion can we even begin to imagine the horrific situation that is the reality for every man, woman, and child suffering in Ukraine.
And from our limited perspective, we have questions, too.
Is it okay to question God? If He already knows our thoughts before we speak them, haven’t the cries of our hearts already reached His ears?
Opening the Scriptures to Psalm 13, we see a barrage of questions from David that express great turmoil.
“How long, O Lord?”
“Will You forget me forever?”
“How long will You hide Your face from me?”
“How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?”
“How long will my enemy be exalted over me?”
These weren’t questions spoken in haste, but rather cries of his soul desperately seeking answers. The thing is, Psalm 13 doesn’t tell us whether God answered David or not, but it ends with words of unwavering trust in God’s mercy and salvation.
“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”
My friends, the Lord knows we have questions and bears with us as we try to understand the “why” of what is going on in Ukraine. He hears both our spoken and unspoken concerns. And He wants us to trust Him. Just as David circled back to God’s unfailing love, we, too, can trust that God will come through.
