Pastor Fredo Ramos: Psalm one zero two. Lord, hear my prayer. Listen to my plea. Don't turn away from me in my time of distress. Bend down to listen and answer me quickly when I call to you.
For my days disappear like smoke and my bones burn like red hot coals. My heart is sick, withered like grass, and I have lost my appetite. Because of my groaning, am reduced to skin and bones. I am like an owl in the desert, like a little owl in a far off wilderness. I lie awake, lonely as a solitary bird on the roof.
What a description. My enemies taught me day after day. They mock and curse me. I eat ashes for food. Terrible diet.
My tears run down into my drink because of your anger and wrath. For you have picked me up and thrown me out. My life passes as swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering away like grass. But you, oh lord, will sit on your throne forever.
Your fame will endure to every generation. You will arise and have mercy on Jerusalem, and now is the time to pity her. Now is the time you promise to help. For your people love every stone in her walls and cherish even the dust in her streets. Then the nations will tremble before the Lord.
The kings of the earth will tremble before his glory for the Lord will rebuild Jerusalem. He will appear in his glory. He will listen to the prayers of the destitute. He will not reject their pleas. Verse 18.
Let this be recorded for future generations so that a people not yet born will praise the Lord. Tell them the Lord looked down from his heavenly sanctuary. He looked down to earth from heaven to hear the groans of the prisoners, to release those condemned to die. Verse 23, he broke my strength in midlife, cutting short my days, but I cried to him, oh my God who lives forever, don't take my life while I am so young. Long ago, you laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens with your hands.
They will perish, but you remain forever. They will wear out like old clothing. You will change them like a garment and discard them, but you are always the same. You will live forever. The children of your people will live in security.
Their children's children will thrive in your presence. By way of reflection, consider for a moment both the desperation of Psalm one zero two and the confidence in how God will keep his promises. This again is the tension that we often feel on a day to day basis. Desperate like the beginning of this prayer, but also confident that somehow, some way, the Lord will keep his promises. I don't know about you, but I am grateful that someone or two is preserved for us in scripture.
Why? Because one, even if I'm not feeling like today is a day where I feel like I'm alone, you know, and I've been eating ashes and I haven't slept, it is important for me to identify with those who do feel this way. Secondly, I'm grateful this psalm is preserved because if you do wake up today and you are feeling as though you have zero appetite, you can't sleep, you are afraid, you are pleading with God to hear you, then you have a place here in Psalm 102 to be reminded that you are not alone. The hope for the Christian is that we are never alone in our suffering and in our pain. And the psalmist here does a good job of holding together this tension of both that desperate plea, God, will you bend down and answer me?
But also this confident that verse 18 says, there'll be future generations that will speak your name. Right? And so there's this resounding hope that there really ultimately is at the end of the day, no unanswered prayer. At one point, God will get to your word. He will get to your cry for help even if it's a not yet and it's a wait.
And I love the confidence here in verse 28. The children of your people will live in security. Their children's children will thrive in your presence. There is this amazing hope. Future generations will rise up.
You see, it's easy in the midst of hardship, maybe even like today for some of you, to feel as though this is the end. This is it. Like God's plan, his promises, all of it's gonna fall apart. All my work will fall apart. And yet even in the midst of their desperation, they're able to hold on to a hope that is directional towards God keeping his promises.
And so by way of invitation now, let's pray this into our day. Jesus, we hear you inviting us now to respond both with honesty, maybe where we feel like we have sleepless nights, Maybe where we feel like we have zero appetite because you seem to be taking your time and not operating on operating on the basis of what we think something should happen and how we think it should happen and when we think it should happen. But God, we look to you realizing that you are the same forever. And so would you help us to be confident even in our desperation that you are a God who keeps his promises. And would you give us now eyes to see today in our days, in our, going to and and there and as in our in our work and our relationships.
Would you give us eyes to see where you have kept your promises so that we might live with this hope? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.