The path no one knew was there (Psalm 77)

As we set out in the New Year and reflect on 2021, Covid is still with us and just when we began to think that life will be getting back to some normalcy, the Omicron variant arrived raising new questions and new fears. What will this year bring for us? It is hard to avoid the sense that life is fragile and what seemed like solid reality now crumbles around us. Who would have thought in our technological world that travel would become limited, that there might be shortages in goods, that mask-wearing would be the norm in public places, that church will frequently be online? Within this larger framework sit our individual lives with their joys as well as their sorrows and losses. How can we take stock and move into 2022 with hope in the God who is unchanging?

No comfort

Our psalm opens with the kind of distress that we know too. When trouble comes, we seek the Lord, don’t we? So does the psalmist. He cries out, stretches out his hand to God (a gesture of prayer), yet oddly, we read that he refuses to be comforted (Ps 77:2). Perhaps this simply means that the consolation offered (in his thinking, in the words of others) will not bring rest to his soul. Alternatively, he may refuse to be satisfied with platitudes and needs something more than the usual words of encouragement.

Seeking an answer

In fact, the common ways of bolstering his spirits do not seem to work. He thinks of God, but that thought brings hurt emphasising His absence; he thinks of the past (perhaps of better times) but this disturbs him even more (Ps 77:3-5). It is painful to reflect that God was once on our side but seems to be no longer. Yet, what is noteworthy in the psalmist’s attitude is that he will not give up. There is an intensity to his probing for resolution. He seeks (Ps 77:2), he considers (Ps 77:5), he meditates or muses (same Hebrew word; Ps 77:6, 12), he inquires (NASB ‘ponders’; Ps 77:6), he studies or meditates (Ps 77:12).

The shape of the problem is outlined in a series of questions that will likely find an echo in our experience. When things go wrong, we feel that God has rejected us, withdrawn His love and grace or is even angry with us (Ps 77:7-10). Who hasn’t known the grief that comes on top of misfortune for believers: not only is life hard, but God Himself abandoned us?

The potential for hope

The psalmist reaches back to a command that is like a golden thread in Scripture: ‘remember’ (e.g. Deut 7:18; 8:2). In it there is suddenly a glimmer of hope, a change of tone (Ps 77:11). How does this remembering differ from his earlier one that brought only grief? Although the psalm does not spell it out, his recollection here is of God’s deeds, work, and character (Ps 77:12-15), whereas perhaps the earlier reminiscences were focused on himself – even when thinking about God – and on what happened to him. Reminding ourselves of God’s character, His power, strength, the redemption that He brought is a way to set our struggles in that larger perspective that we lose sight of in our pain.

In fact, the psalmist’s remembering is so intense that his description almost reads like a theophany (an experience where God appears; Ps 77:16-20). The picture he paints of the waters and the reference to Moses and Aaron are a reminder of the exodus and God’s redemption of His people, but the waters in Israelite thinking are also associated with the forces of chaos (as opposed to order) that threaten to engulf the world. The Lord, however, can overcome the turmoil that is ready to swamp us. He makes a way through those chaotic waters where no one could see a way, a way that leaves no trace of His path afterwards (Ps 77:19).

As we face the New Year, will we remember God’s character amid struggles and consciously choose to remind ourselves of that larger picture? May we not forget that God’s redemption and help most often comes in unexpected ways, through ‘a pathway no one knew was there’ (v.19, NLT)!

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