Daily Devotional
When Life Gets Messy
Text:Psalms 73:3
“For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”
Message
Life is messy and can get very messy. We see, feel, and experience injustices and disappointments, and are tempted to say: “Get a life” or “What’s all these?”
There’s a big world out there, and it’s not waiting for you to give it a passing grade.
Yes, human suffering is very real, and we should meet it with compassion.
But we don’t have to live in an ideal world in order to love God and our neighbour. Life is messy for everyone, not just you.
If asked, we would probably have arranged the world differently—but without the full range of human freedom that God entrusted to us.
Psalm 73 can help us remember that God never abandons us and that evil-doers have only an apparent victory.
If we allow ourselves to be consumed by a sense of envy about the injustice of life, we will certainly miss what God wants to give us.
Psalm 73 is to be understood on the premise of a thanksgiving response to being delivered, not from some physical threat, but rather from a personal crisis!
It begins and ends with an affirmation of the goodness of God, but in the middle stands a profound struggle of faith; “Why Do the Wicked Prosper?”
Through some kind of experience at the temple in worship, the Psalmist comes to a deeper awareness of the closeness and presence of God.
Worship of God and theological struggle can coexist in the heart of the believer (Psalm 1, 13, 21, and 26), but at the end, we must return and focus on Jesus Christ the author and finisher of our faith.
Suicide because of the messiness of life is cheap but costly. It leads to hell. Don’t quit. Quiters don’t win, and winners don’t quit.
Just hold on to God. He is worthy and dependable. He will deliver on His promise and reward your labour of love.
Shalom.