April 23

Friday is accountability day. Send me an email concerning your progress in our journey.

Remember to set aside Thursday, May 13th as our Bible Reader’s Celebration Dinner. 7:00 pm for pizza and salad at my house.

Psalm 77: A Psalm for the broken hearted. This was the Psalm the Lord gave to me during the week of 9/11. At times that week, I was so overwhelmed with sadness that I could not function. I sat in my study for 3 days paralyzed by the enormity of this evil in our land. That moment, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are defining moments of our lives.

It is in these dark times that the light of Jesus needs to shine brightest in us. It is only the followers of Jesus Christ who can speak about hope in these moments of hopelessness and despair. Psalm 77 was written in order to help people who were overwhelmed with despair to find hope, to find light in the midst of the darkness.

Let me share with you a story that strikes to the heart of our hope in the midst of darkness. It is a story from Dave Draveky's newsletter. Dave was a San Francisco baseball pitcher who in his battle with cancer lost his pitching arm. Now, he has a ministry to cancer patients. This is a poignant story from his newsletter.

A father was watching his three and a half year old son, Johnny, die of cancer. At one point, the little boy said to his father, “Daddy will I ever get my hair back?” What do you say to a once beautiful 3 year old son who now looks like a poster child for famine relief? Through tears that his little boy saw, the father responded, “Jesus loves you this I know for the Bible tells me so.” The day before Johnny died he was in terrible agony.
The father came to his moment of despair in the darkness and he shouted at God that day, “God where the hell are you? Don’t you care, can’t you see, and why won’t you help? Speak, God damn you speak.”
If the first thing that comes to your mind is a Christian should not speak like this, then you have no idea of what it is to express your broken heart to God. The story goes on, this father then heard a small weak voice, it was his son’s voice. He dropped to one knee and put his ear close to Johnny's mouth, “Johnny, what did you say?” His response to his dad, who was now on both knees, “Daddy I'm not talking to you I'm talking to Jesus.” A sense of awe began to sweep over the dad with hushed anticipation and he said, “OK son, go ahead talk to Jesus I'm listening.” These were Johnny's final words to his dad and his final words on earth, “Jesus, help my Daddy to be happy and not sad.”

In the darkness, it is automatic for our broken hearts to question the goodness, the love, and the power of God. But once those questions have been voiced, we must move to our healing. And that healing is to remember the deeds and the character of God.

Psalm 77:10-12 Then I thought, "To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High."
11I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.

When your broken heart arrives, don’t run away from God, run to him. He is our only hope in the darkness.