O God, do not be silent! Do not be deaf. Do not be quiet, O God. Don’t you hear the uproar of your enemies? Don’t you see that your arrogant enemies are rising up? They devise crafty schemes against your people; they conspire against your precious ones. “Come,” they say, “let us wipe out Israel as a nation. We will destroy the very memory of its existence.” Yes, this was their unanimous decision. They signed a treaty as allies against you— these Edomites and Ishmaelites; Moabites and Hagrites; Gebalites, Ammonites, and Amalekites; and people from Philistia and Tyre. Assyria has joined them, too, and is allied with the descendants of Lot. Interlude Do to them as you did to the Midianites and as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the Kishon River. They were destroyed at Endor, and their decaying corpses fertilized the soil. Let their mighty nobles die as Oreb and Zeeb did. Let all their princes die like Zebah and Zalmunna, for they said, “Let us seize for our own use these pasturelands of God!” O my God, scatter them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind! As a fire burns a forest and as a flame sets mountains ablaze, chase them with your fierce storm; terrify them with your tempest. Utterly disgrace them until they submit to your name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and terrified forever. Let them die in disgrace. Then they will learn that you alone are called the Lord, that you alone are the Most High, supreme over all the earth.
Psalms 83:1-18 NLT
God’s timing is hard for us humans. The psalmist knows the mighty works of the Lord, listed in verses 9-11. But the author wants the Lord to act now, in his timing, in his day. The nations have conspired together to destroy Israel, seeking to wipe them off the face of the earth and dishonor the name of the Lord. The psalmist is crying out for God’s justice. But it seemed that the Almighty King was so far away; it felt like our loving Father was silent and indifferent (vv.1-2).
The Lord always works for our good, even when this means times of silence, distance, and punishment. These are very hard for us, especially if we have matured to the point of our faith when we depend on His presence for our power. Yet our loving Father allows us to go through the “dark night of the soul” so that we will trust more in His promise than our feelings. He IS always present, but we don’t always feel it. But He promised He would never leave us (Deut 31:6; Josh 1:9; Psalm 118:6-7; Matt 28:20; Heb 13:5), and He never will.
Have you ever felt that God was distant? How did you deal with those feelings? How can you trust in the Lord’s timing, especially when it doesn’t make sense
