Psalm 73

Jim Lowe considers the seasons of life

Jim Lowe

I love everything about autumn. It's the start of the rugby and football seasons. I love the expectation that Christmas is coming soon. I love wrapping up warmly and taking the dog for walks. I love the colours of the leaves. It's just such an awesome season.

The other day I was walking the dog and I thought: what must it be like for the trees to lose their leaves every year? Imagine being a young sapling and it's your first autumn. You've grown these great leaves; you feel beautiful and then suddenly autumn comes and your leaves change colour. Then, one by one, they fall off. If I was a sapling, I would be in panic mode. How was I going to collect sunlight to photosynthesise and grow? I'd be thinking: is this the beginning of the end?

For that young sapling, it would feel like everything in its world was falling apart. But for the older trees, they know in autumn they lose their leaves. But they also know that after winter they'll come back stronger and more beautiful than before. They know that winter won't last forever.

In our life we also go through seasons. We have times that are brilliant and we feel on top of the world. Then we have times that are terrible and we wonder if we are ever going to get out of this situation.

In Psalm 73 Asaph writes about how everything seems to be going well for everyone else, including the wicked, but not for him. Things just seem to be going badly in his situation even though he's doing his best to do things right.

In verse 12-14 he says:
'Look at these wicked people-
enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply.
Did I keep my heart pure for nothing?
Did I keep myself innocent for no reason?
I get nothing but trouble all day long;
every morning brings me pain'.

Sometimes things happen to us in life and we can't understand why. We're like Asaph; we keep thinking what have I done? What more can I do? God can feel so distant from us at that time. We can become like those young saplings, wondering what's happening.
But we have to realise one thing. Jesus never said life would be easy. He never promised everything would go our way. But the one thing He promised is that He'd never leave us.

As Asaph is writing this Psalm, he comes to this realisation:
'Then I realized that my heart was bitter,
and I was all torn up inside.
I was so foolish and ignorant-
I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.
Yet I still belong to you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
leading me to a glorious destiny.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.' Psalm 73:21-26

I love the fact that Asaph realises that even though things around him may not be going well, God is still there for him; still giving him strength. It would have been so easy for him to give up and say, 'Well God, I've done things your way and it's not worked, so I'm giving up on you.' But he didn't and as a result he came to see God was still in control.

Sometimes for us, when things start going wrong it's hard to see God working, but we have to trust that in the end God will come through for us and we need to hold on to the promises in the Bible that God won't abandon us.

I've been watching the X-factor recently and the song 'Say Something' by Great Big World Featuring Christina Aguilera keeps playing:

'Say something, I'm giving up on you'.

When we face seasons in our life, when we lose things, when we fail, we feel alone. We can feel like crying out to God, because we can't hear Him, we can't feel Him. We can feel like giving up on God. But God's there. He's saying don't give up. Keep going because the thing about autumn and winter is they are always followed by summer and spring and new life and colour.

In the same way trees will get stronger each year after winter, after each trial we get stronger. We just have to hold on to God in the hard times.