Best of Daily Reflections: When God Seems Too Small

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’

The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.

The day after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA, the New York Daily News offered the headline, “God Isn’t Fixing This.” Although the intent was mostly to criticize politicians, the underlying assumption was still striking: The world has spun beyond God’s control. He is in over his head.

Way back in 597 BC, Babylon conquered the Jewish nation. They left the city and temple in ruins. They hauled 10,000 of the upper crust of Hebrew society, business, and politics back to Babylon where they remained captives for 60 years. Meanwhile, back home in Jerusalem, life was left entombed in poverty and spiritual despair—for sixty years!

Sixty years in misery is certainly long enough to make a person wonder if their God was too small.

But then, in what seemed like a twinkling of an eye, the Persian emperor Cyrus sent them home. The word on the street was that God was the moving force behind the miracle of deliverance for his people. The psalmist wrote about the moment:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;

Their astonishing deliverance was so dramatic that it was news everywhere.

… then it was said among the nations,

‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.

The psalmist then offered a word of comfort to anyone who feels exiled in grief. Remember that to God your tears are seeds from which one day a harvest will grow that will fill your mouth with laughter and your tongues with shouts of joy.

Prayer:

O Lord, my God, be magnified in my heart to enlarge my capacity to love; be magnified in my mind to grasp the glory of your creation; and be magnified in my soul to trust in unseen resources and in my will to live and serve in the manner of Jesus. Amen.

Questions for further reflection

What reasons do you find yourself giving to explain the extent of human suffering? Describe some of the environments in which you find it hard to see or believe that God is at work.

The whole biblical drama teaches us to one day expect a great reversal of fortune that will fill our mouths with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy. If this is true, how should we live in the meantime?

Psalm 126

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’

The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.