Psalm 77 & God’s Track Record

How do we reconcile the sufferings of life with who God is? There’s so much joy and beauty in this world, but there seems to be equal amounts of suffering and horror.

I recently read Psalm 77 and was struck by the way that the writer, Asaph, navigates this question. He is simultaneously honest about his suffering and cognizant of who God is in the midst of it. He neither ignores his pain nor ignores his God. He laments and he remembers, clinging to God’s track record amid his very real suffering.

Lament

The psalmist begins with his laments. I don’t know his particular context of suffering, but the experience he relates is universal. He cries out to God and receives no comfort, and the reminder of God causes him to moan (v. 3). He asks questions such as “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” and “Has his steadfast love forever ceased?” He doesn’t minimize the hard he’s experiencing for the sake of skipping right to the good. He does get there, but first he wades through the hard with brutal honesty. He describes the experiences of his body and soul, thoughts and emotions: “My soul refuses to be comforted”; “I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”

Psalm 77 gives room for honest, raw dialogue with God. He doesn’t require us to tidy or polish our feelings and thoughts before coming to him. He knows the doubts we have, and he welcomes us to bring them to him. Even the fact that this psalm was included in Scripture reveals God’s character. While we may tend to view God as distant or harsh in our suffering, this psalm shows the opposite. The psalmist expresses questions and doubts about the Lord, but he isn’t rebuked for doing so. God is compassionate toward sufferers; he knows our suffering, not just as an observer but as a co-sufferer. He invites us to engage with him in it. We are not called to move immediately to praise when we encounter hardship. We are called to be honest before the Lord about what we are experiencing. Instead of embittered complaint turned away from God, the psalmists models godly lament as he brings his doubts to the Lord and lays them before him.

We can often feel like God doesn’t want to hear us. We fear we’re just complaining, or we compare our sufferings to others’ in a way that minimizes what we’re going through. But God never minimizes our suffering, and neither should we.

Remember

Asaph’s troubles feel overwhelming, and they bring up a lot of doubts about the character of God. Yet the psalmist knows that he cannot judge God’s goodness based on his present circumstances. Instead, he must remember who God says he is and what he’s done.

After nine verses of crying out to God with questions and sorrow, the turn comes in verse 10: “I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.” Asaph begins to list the Lord’s deeds: deeds of power and might, and also deeds of great mercy and care. He has redeemed his people. This psalmist is going back to God’s track record—specifically his deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea.

In a sense, the psalmist is moving his gaze from his present circumstance and looking back at God’s track record. He can’t make sense of who God is and what he’s doing simply by looking at what’s happening to him now. But he knows that God has proved himself to be faithful throughout history. The psalmist urges his soul to remember God’s faithfulness, power, and love throughout the generations, which is a greater testimony of God’s character than Asaph’s present situation seems to be.

There are many pictures of God’s character in the psalm—his power and might, his holiness and awe. But my favorite picture comes in the last verse when we get a glimpse of this same God’s loving, tender care. He led his people “like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (v. 20). He led them not “with an iron fist,” but “like a flock.” There is a tenderness in this. Though this is the God whom waters were afraid of (v. 16) and whose “lightnings lighted up the world” (v. 18), he leads his people like a shepherd. These verses show a kindness that is often absent from my idea of the Lord.

Cling to the Track Record

In the words of one pastor, we must become like Asaph, who “does the work of a ‘covenant archaeologist.’”¹ This phrase captures the intentionality and purposefulness of looking back, and it shows the goal of doing so: to see God’s covenant at work. He who delivered his people from slavery to Egypt, even parting the sea to see them to safety, would surely not abandon his people now. He must be at work, even if they can’t see it. God has proven himself to be aware of his people’s suffering and to be able to do something about it. We have a solid hope that God never changes, and if we need a reminder of who he is, we need look no further than his steadfast faithfulness all throughout Scripture and human history. The greatest place we see this is, of course, in Jesus, the fulfillment of all God’s promises, who willingly entered our suffering to join us in it and promises to one day destroy it forever. 

I tend to rely on my own experience and senses to determine whether God loves me or will be faithful to me. And let me tell you, this changes by the hour! For someone who obsesses over whether or not I have faith, I want to become increasingly aware of the fact that it is God who remains faithful when I am not. I think this is another way in which we are called to walk by faith. Faith isn’t a naïve optimism or a trust in the comfort of our circumstances. Faith is holding on to the promises of God, however feeble our grip, because it is God who remains faithful.

In his book When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend, pastor Mark Meynell writes that during a hard battle with depression, he “had to cling to the track record, to the knowledge that [God] is a reliable friend on the way.”² We can’t rely on our experience to determine God’s character, but we can be assured of his character by remembering his track record.

Where do your anxieties loom large and your struggles feel insurmountable? Don’t diminish them. Be real, and take them to the God who sees.

Where can you see God’s hand at work—in the past in your life, in redemptive history, in Scripture verses, in everyday common grace gifts such as other people, creation, and the arts? What can serve as a pivot to remember who the Lord says he is and has proven himself to be?

Trusting God is never easy. It’s not a once-and-done thing, as though we’ve trusted the Lord and now we don’t need to do it again. We come again and again, bringing our sorrows and sufferings, wrestling to reconcile them with who God is and what he’s done. We even need to preach to ourselves the truth when we’re struggling to believe it. We take a step forward and we stumble. We find hope growing in us, only to sink lower into despair. And in all this we find the kindness and steadfast love of our God.

Notes

1. Ken Montgomery, “Sleeplessness and Forgetfulness in Psalm 77,” Tabletalk. https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/sleeplessness-and-forgetfulness-in-psalm-77/
2. Mark Meynell, When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend