can’t expect “easy”

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,

and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Psalm 90:15

There is no promise of continuous prosperity for God’s people. Those who teach this are false prophets. Even in songs of worship, God’s Word reminds us that days of affliction, even years of seeing bad experiences will often mark God’s people. We do not expect an easy life. We do not demand only positively and prosperity. It is the case that God loves us even in affliction and uses even the worst evils we may come to know in order to draw us closer to Him and in deeper life with one another.

So it isn’t about never having a negative episode. Instead, life is all about the way God helps us in our afflictions and through difficulty, even decreeing it for us as a means of grace or a method of correction. When Moses wrote these words in Psalm 90, Israel was condemned to see a generation of faithless rejectors drop dead in the desert sands of the wilderness because of their persistent unbelief. The “days” of their affliction number 40 years. Moses prayed that the nation might eventually find an equal time of gladness from God. He trusted that God would bring good to a new generation, even as a current generation died under judgment.

And so Christians should pray today with clarity about the wrongs we know. God clearly judges evil and sin. Often the most scathing judgment comes as He lets sin play out its natural course to final consequence. That can be see all over our current contentious society where there frankly are no longer good options culturally and politically. God brings the worst judgement when idolatry runs its course. So when I sadly see Christians worshiping culture, celebrities, power, or politics, I am not surprised to see the broader social structure continue to drift from God’s truth into chaos. A dry wilderness is what we live in now and could it be the last 40 years of Christians hungering for worldly power that has brought us here? In an age where people post their desires on their social media “walls” for the world to see, sometimes the idolatry is sickeningly obvious. It is as outrageous as Israel rejecting the promise of Canaan. I tend to think God is currently bringing affliction and using evil to get our attention focused on Him as we have often confused kingdoms.

Lord,

Restore Your people to worship only You. As cultural and political idolatry plague us and will multiply over the next two weeks, pull us to repentance instead, I pray.

Amen