Before You Feel Like It

Before You Feel Like It--December 12, 2018

"But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,

    the one whom you made strong for yourself.

 Then we will never turn back from you;

    give us life, and we will call on your name.

 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts;

    let your face shine, that we may be saved." [Psalm 80:17-19]

Sometimes I think it is the future answer to our prayers that prompts us to pray in the present.

I know that sounds backwards, or suggests time-travel, but hear me out for a moment.  Maybe we do need to have a bigger sense of time, a more fluid sense of how the stream of past and present and future flow into one another.  Maybe we need to consider for a moment how God's promised future leads us to see God present among us and available to us now.

As a test case for this thought experiment, consider these verses from what we call Psalm 80.  The poet prays to God from a place of disconnect with God.  A lot of this psalm is lamenting past disasters, past times of turning away from God, and past poor choices that have led to regrets in the present.  The one praying feels cut off from God, and like his whole country is out of whack.  Their priorities got skewed and they had gotten themselves into trouble--again. They could look back and see a laundry list of times that God had been there for them, providing for them and protecting them, and they had blown it.  And so now they felt alone and under attack--they felt like God had allowed their enemies to knock down the best of what they had built up, and to wreck all that God had given them.  

The poet has this feeling that God had done the worst thing God can possibly do: to give us exactly what we ask for when we say, "You can't make me do what you want! I don't care what you think--I'm doing things My Way, and you aren't going to tell me not to put Me and My Wants First!"  In those moments, God says, with the kind of sheer honesty that only deep love and heartbroken vulnerability can muster, "As you wish.  Have it your way."  And now that his people, his whole nation, has gotten a taste of what happens when they all think they know better and each person puts their own interests first: life becomes miserable.  They had gotten a taste of what happens when you act like you are the center of the universe--you become a lonely black hole.  And so the poet here longs for the possibility that they could be brought back into a restored relationship with God.  He feels like he and his people have broken the relationship from their side, but he hopes for reconciliation.

And this is where the future spills over, backward, into his present.  The psalmist and his community feel like they are estranged from God, but the poet can foresee a future when they are once again on speaking terms.  And so, he lets that future give him the courage to come back to God in prayer.  He can imagine a day when, once again, "we will never turn back from you," and "we will call on your name," and so he steps into that future day by... well, calling on God's name! That future reconciliation makes it possible for this poet to be honest about what they have done, to be vocal about their sorrow over the loss they have gone through, and to be daring enough in faith to call out to God, even though he still feels like he is distant from God.

And maybe this is the most vital takeaway for us listening in on this prayer: if you are feeling distant and out of touch with God, you don't wait until you "feel" closer to approach God. You don't wait until you "feel" spiritual.  You don't hold off until you've got your act together and all your mess-ups fixed.  You don't wait until you are out of the funk--you pray from the funk you are in, and you talk with God in light of a future when you will feel that closeness again.  Instead of waiting until we think we've got the right, religious-sounding, properly pious answers for the theology exam, we pick up the conversation with God just as we are--with our doubts and confusions and all of our half-backward, upside-down thinking about God, and we just talk.  We lean into the future in the present, so that even if I don't feel particularly spiritual or pious or peaceful or close to God now, I trust that God's grip won't let go of me and will, in time draw me in.  So I live like it, pray like it, now.

All of that means realizing that God is present with me, and for me, and around me, even if I don't feel like it right now.  It means the relationship is always available--even if I'm in the midst of turning my back on God, God does not disappear in a poof of divine indignance.  God remains available, even before I see it, admit it, or acknowledge it.

Today, what if we let the future spill over a little into our present? What if we envisioned the end of estrangement and dared to just call out to God, even if we don't feel ready for it, or worthy of it, or maybe aren't even sure the God we are calling to is really there? What if we didn't wait until we "felt" religious but just called out honestly in trust that we will be caught when we take the leap?

That's what it looks like to see Christ here, even in the waiting.

Lord God, in all the messes we are currently in, before resolution comes, before answers are given, before we even feel your peace, we call on you.  Restore us, let your face shine on us, and let us know you are with us.