Lent Devotional

My name is Mike Congrove. Ali and I first attended Fellowship in December 2008. We're in a Life Group, I get to serve as a Life Group Coach, Ali enjoys MomCo, and I have the privilege of working with John Monychol, our South Sudanese missions partner.

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Stories of faith are wonderful — when they are told in the past tense. But what about when you feel as if you're up to your waist in soft mud, the water is rising, and it feels as if you may drown? What if your immediate family shuns you? What if your humiliation is so public that drunkards make songs about it?

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David felt all of this. My guess is this was when his son, Absalom, ran him out of town. Or was it when Saul pursued him? Or perhaps it was a different challenging time in his life that isn't recorded. As his world is collapsing around him, he prays: "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord, at an acceptable time." Sound familiar? "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done."

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David's desperate angst in this psalm is a prophetic passage of Christ's total rejection: "You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor; All my adversaries are before You. Reproach has broken my heart and I am so sick. And I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."

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And what does he say before these words? "Answer me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good; according to the greatness of Your compassion, turn to me." My circumstances are dire — perhaps even life-threatening, perhaps death is imminent! But God is loving, kind, and full of compassion. David's and Jesus' perspective was this: "But I am afflicted and in pain; May Your salvation, O God, set me securely on high. I will praise the name of God with song and magnify Him with thanksgiving."

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We were asked to answer this question: In what ways does this passage impact my heart's desire to repent and worship Jesus? If they can do it, why not us?

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"Why did God allow this to happen to me?" "Where is God?" These are questions one might hear when calamity strikes. I have the gift of working with the Church in South Sudan and Sudan. I've watched my friends lose everything to war and move their families into refugee camps. I've seen real poverty and desperation, and I've heard horrific tales of violence and abuse. What I don't hear very often are those questions above.

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It's the gift the Church under duress has to give us: the conviction that God is good, full of lovingkindness and compassion even — and especially — in the worst circumstances. They say, with David: "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord... I will praise the name of God with song and magnify Him with thanksgiving."