Why, God?

Psalm 10:1-11

1O LORD, why do you stand so far away?

Why do you hide when I need you the most?

2Proud and wicked people viciously oppress the poor.

Let them be caught in the evil they plan for others.

3For they brag about their evil desires;

they praise the greedy and curse the LORD.

4These wicked people are too proud to seek God.

They seem to think that God is dead.

5Yet they succeed in everything they do.

They do not see your punishment awaiting them.

They pour scorn on all their enemies.

6They say to themselves, “Nothing bad will ever happen to us!

We will be free of trouble forever!”

7Their mouths are full of cursing, lies, and threats.

Trouble and evil are on the tips of their tongues.

8They lurk in dark alleys,

murdering the innocent who pass by.

They are always searching

for some helpless victim.

9Like lions they crouch silently,

waiting to pounce on the helpless.

Like hunters they capture their victims

and drag them away in nets.

10The helpless are overwhelmed and collapse;

they fall beneath the strength of the wicked.

11The wicked say to themselves, “God isn’t watching!

He will never notice!”

In 1805 Henry Martyn had one arm around his sweetheart as he read Psalm 10:1. This twenty-four-year-old felt sure that God wanted him to go to India as a missionary. But the girl he loved, Lydia Grenfell, was too frail to handle India’s climate. As they read this psalm together, their hearts were heavy, for in a few hours they would be separated, never to see each other again.

Why, God, why? Why did God allow them to fall in love if he wanted Henry to go to India? We don’t know that Henry ever got an explanation. We do know that God had great plans for young Henry and that Henry didn’t have much time to fulfill them, for it was just seven years later that he died. In that brief time, however, he translated the New Testament into Hindustani and both the New Testament and his beloved Psalms into Persian. Because he followed God’s plans for him, millions of people could read the Scriptures in their own languages.

Twice in the first verse of Psalm 10 the psalmist asks God why—a question the psalmists will cry out again and again throughout the Psalms. We may never find an answer to this question, but we can take great comfort in the answer to a much more important question: Who? This is what the psalmist does at the end of this psalm. Once we catch a glimpse of who God is, we can learn to trust him while his specific purposes remain hidden from us.

I am not skilled to understand

What God has willed, what God has planned;

I only know at his right hand

Stands one who is my Savior.

DORA GREENWELL

Fascinating Fact

The three books in the Old Testament that ask the question why most often are Job, Jeremiah, and Psalms. The entire book of Job is about the main character’s struggle to answer this question. In the end the Lord answers Job’s question not with a what but a who.

Notable Quotable

“It is not until the flower has fallen off that the fruit begins to ripen.”

J. C. GREY