Psalm 18:19 paints a very different picture of life with God as our Deliverer. What image does it use to contrast with oppression?
“being brought to a spacious place”
It’s testimony time. In what way would you say God has brought you out of oppression into a spacious place?
“I haven’t faced much oppression, but I suppose, socially middle school and high school forced me to shrink unobtrusively into acceptable corners to avoid conflict or torment. University life and life up here have let me blossom again.”
Read Psalm 71:17-18. How can this contrasting context of ‘from my youth’ counteract the oppression many of us may have endured from our youth?
“God has been teaching us throughout the oppression, showing His marvelous deeds, and never forsaking us.”
Think of an oppressive situation you endured with others. How did you react to it or cope with it, particularly in your own human nature?
“I suppose school had its moments. I generally tried to ignore all tormentors, be a teacher’s pet, and apply myself to my studies.”
Think of another person who shared the same environment and had a completely different reaction. Without naming the person, describe it.
“My friend (Sokun), threw her milk at Chad (the twerp) when he wouldn’t stop taunting her. Then she was the one in trouble for making a mess.”
Fill in the following blanks according to the HCSB:
‘Plowmen plowed “over my back”;
they made their “furrows long”.’
Read Isaiah 51:22-23 carefully and thoughtfully. What does verse 23 say about the backs of some of God’s children?
“They were like the ground, like a street to be walked over.”
What does Isaiah 49:25 tell us our Defender will do? “He will contend with those who contend with us and save our children.”
How much does God‘s loyalty mean to you and why?
“It is the most important loyalty. If God is for me, who can be against me. If, on the other hand, He were against me, what good would any enormous quantity of human help be?”
The best news of Psalm 129 is heralded in verse 2. Complete the following sentence accordingly: since my youth, they have often attacked me, “but they have not prevailed against me.”
Dearest Rachel –
Like you, I remember being the odd one out, socially speaking, in school. Even when I was one, I rarely understood kids – and nowadays, they’re practically an alien species to me. Granted, that’s more on me than on them; they aren’t so much weirder than I just haven’t tried to keep up with them. But even when I was one of them, I wasn’t. We weren’t well-off, relatively speaking, I wasn’t one of the “pretty people,” and what intellectual advantage I may have had wasn’t one, since it did no favors to those who were popular and determined who else could be part of that club.
Not that it necessarily bothered me. Oh, I had to develop a thick skin – and that took way too long to happen; I took far too much too personally for a long time – but eventually, I got to the point where I didn’t care what other people thought about me. Indeed, I sometimes took pride in going against the flow, and tended to assume that if something was popular, it was by definition stupid and bad – a perspective that, on further reflection, was probably just as wrong as theirs, since it was just as much an unthinking generalization.
At least the two of us made it through all that, and the puerile teasing we received in our respective youths have long since faded into dim memory (which is the real purpose of our all-too-effective ability to forget things; there is so much in life either not worth remembering, or even more so, that we need to forget in order to get on with our lives). Who knows? Maybe our former tormentors have since regretting what they were like to us and other kids back in the day – although, more likely, they too have forgotten what they were like once upon a time.
Of course, I’m talking about childish taunting, and for reasons far beneath that of our faith; neither of us could say we experienced opprobrium due to our faith and our expressions thereof. God’s assurances that He will prevail over those who oppose us (and, more to the point, Him), while comforting in the abstract, are hard for us to grasp who haven’t truly faced threats for His sake, like Pastor James in Nigeria, or various other people we’ve known who have worked overseas in a missionary capacity (and who, in some cases, I still couldn’t speak about in these letters, even as I traveled to where they were once stationed, lest word get out as to their true mission in some of these places).
I tend to think of His support as giving us strength of will to push on in His name, which is also difficult to imagine. There are times when it would be nice if He would make His presence known and felt a little more strongly, especially in notably hostile places and situations. Wouldn’t it be great to experience an “Elijah among the prophets of Ba’al” moment, particularly where the populace is militantly opposed to Him? Oh, they may claim that they follow Him (and that the name they give Him is that of the One True God), but some kind of tangible evidence to the contrary – like, say, a lightning bolt shattering the Kaaba – would be more than welcome, especially considering that they seem to think of themselves as the fists and swords of God (as if He needed us to fight His battles for Him).
But I suppose such moments would preclude faith; if He demonstrated Himself and His presence in such a manner, what credit would there be to us for believing in something so obvious? Then again, He has made Himself obvious before, and people refused to believe; why would another such intervention have any different results? Still, considering that He could rest the entirety of the earth on His fingertip like a grain of sand as easily as He races through each and ever atom keeping the electrons together and orbiting their nuclei, it shouldn’t surprise us that He will prevail over those who oppose Him in the end. We just don’t know what that will look like.
Or maybe you do, being thus freed from the constraints of time and space. It would be nice to know, I’m sure, but I don’t suppose you’re able to tell those of us left behind what that might look like. For now, all I can do is ask that you keep an eye on us, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 