No Answer

“O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!”Psalm 88:1-2 ESV

Reflection: what do you do when God doesn’t seem to answer your prayers? 

Without doing any sort of survey, I’m sure most Christians have prayed for something, even something important and completely selfless and seemingly in God’s will, like healing of a family member’s illness, but nothing happens. The illness persists. We know our God is all powerful, yet He seems to allow some suffering to continue, even among His children. And we wonder why? This might be one of those impossible questions to answer, because we know, and perhaps respond with what the Lord says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8 ESV. But, is that too easy of an answer? Perhaps a bit of a “Christian copout” when we don’t have a good answer. Because, if God does what He wants anyway, why then do we pray about anything?  

At first when reading psalm 88, it can seem totally depressing. The psalmist is crying out to God for help, but there is no answer. Only silence. Even by the end of the psalm, there are no answers. In fact, in the last few verses, we read “Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” Psalm 88:15-18 ESV. The psalmist even seems to attribute his suffering to God’s doing. 

This psalm is referred to as a “Maskil”, which means it is an instructional psalm. Something to meditate on and learn from. So what are we to learn here? Probably multiple things, because a “no answer” is something we all experience at times. So, to begin with, the first thing to recognize is that we are not alone in our suffering. Not alone in not always understanding what God is doing, why He seems far away at times. Why he is not answering. If we think of some of the greatest people and stories of the Bible, we see suffering. Like Joseph. Moses. Job. David. And of course our Lord Jesus suffered the most of all, even praying on the cross, recorded in Matthew 27:46, from the Septuagint version, “wherefore, O Lord, dost thou reject my prayers? why hidest thou thy face from me?”, which sounds a lot like the prayer of this psalmist who wrote “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” Psalm 88:14 ESV. So suffering doesn’t mean that God is not there, that He is not listening to our prayers, and that the will of God is not being done. 

But what are we to do then? We read  “Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.” Psalm 88:9b-13 ESV. I find these verses very beautiful, because they are “tucked away” in the middle of the suffering. A continual prayer to God, regardless of the circumstances, 

“Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.” Psalm 88:9b, 13 ESV.

And this is faith. Because, the psalmist continues to pray, to cry out and plead with God about his situation, which is what we are also to do. Even when there are no answers, at least in the way we want or expect. Perhaps God is teaching us something else, like to trust in Him alone. Or perhaps to humble us. Or to spend more time in prayer. Perhaps we are to be the example and strength for someone else, who needs to learn how to trust and have faith in God. Not just when it is easy to trust Him. But when it is difficult. Like for so many who have gone before us. 

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