Cries Not Lost in the Clamor
I love the Psalms. I love the language. I love the majesty. But mostly I love the gritty reality; the real and living emotion they embody. I love the heart of the God Who was not afraid to record the angry dismay of His saints — the ones who brokenly asked “why”. No, nor was He afraid to trace the tears of His fainting ones; the ones too crushed to even wonder. And so, for every Peter who has whispered, “Go away from me Lord!”(Luke 5:8); for every David who has cried out, “Look away from me, that I may smile again!” (Psalm 39:13, ESV) For every Mary who has wept in a voiceless sorrow (John 20:15); for every one of us who has wrestled hard in His hand, there is grace. There is peace. He knows how we pray when we are desperate and He knows how to hold us when we weep.
Perhaps there is no immediate answer to what you are facing — whether loss or regret, or one of those inevitable, inescapable seasons of life. Or maybe the color of your question is tinged with shades of other things; we all have our own unique hue. But He loves you, my friend. He loves you. His promise is the rainbow if only we endure the storm.
Maybe that’s it after all. Maybe we can only relish the splendor of the rainbow after the darkness of the storm. And maybe what we took for howling wind was really a holy round of hallelujahs — a chorus of praise from those far-off saints; the once trembling lips of broken sinners, now empowered with the sound of continual praise.
May it be so in us Lord. May it be so in us.
Jesus Christ is no dead Christ who is to be remembered only. He is a living Christ who, at this moment, is all that He ever was, and is doing in loftier fashion all the gracious things that He did upon earth. That pause of the King is repeated now, and the quick ear which discerned the difference between the unreal shouts of the crowd, and the agony of sincerity in the cry of the beggar, is still open. He is in the heavens, surrounded by its glories, and, as I think Scripture teaches us, wielding providence and administering the affairs of the universe. He does not need to pause in order to hear you and me. If He did, He would—if I may venture upon such an impossible supposition—bid the hallelujahs of heaven hush themselves, and suspend the operations of His providence if need were, rather than that you or I, or any poor man who cries to Him, should be unheard and unhelped. The living Christ is as tender a friend, has as quick an ear, is as ready to help at once, today, as He was when outside the gate of Jericho; and every one of us may lift his or her poor, thin voice, and it will go straight up to the throne, and not be lost in the clamour of the hallelujahs that echo round His seat. Christ still hears and answers the cry of need. Send you it up, and you will find that true.”
Alexander Maclaren
