In my own faith journey, it took me a long time to come to the understanding that strong emotion – even negative emotion – is healthy. When things go wrong, God can seem cruel or capricious to us. What good is an omniscient, omnipotent God if that God ignores our cares and fails to exert power for us when we’re hurting?
Psalm 42:9 approaches this frustration: “I say to my God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?’”
I know what it means to look for a seemingly absent God in my life. The thing is, I always know where to find God – in prayer, in meditation, and, most of all, in writing.
When I write, I begin to articulate my thoughts and gently vent my feelings. Sometimes, when things are going very well, I find another presence in my words, and understanding begins to dawn. I thought I was penning a question, but it miraculously turned into the answer. It is a gift from the Good Shepherd.
This message is excerpted from “You, too, can be a psalmist.” by Karen Craigo in the September 2019 Gather magazine.
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