There are times when we feel really good about life and times when we don’t, times when we feel strong in faith and times when we don’t. In Psalm 40, the Psalmist writes about the good times, when his faith was strong and he was full of praise & thanksgiving.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me & heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. But then there comes times of trial & attending doubt. We all have them. He is aware of his sins, failures & short-comings; of life’s problems and challenges. He needs God. Where is God, anyway, when you need Him?!

Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love and faithfulness always protect me. For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me. Be pleased to save me, Lord; come quickly, Lord, to help me.

In her book, ‘Small Wonder,’ Barbara Kingsolver writes of a day her heart nearly broke as her little girl came home from school and ran to her. “Are they still having that war in Afghanistan? she asked. Kingsolve writes that many things may "break our heart, the passing of a loved one, the absence of a friend, the hopes and fears that turn into dashed dreams and the reality finally happening: something we had greatly feared actually happens." As if,” she continues, “the world were such a place that in one afternoon, while kindergartners were working hard to master the letter I, it would decide to lay down its arms."

Her daughter said: “If people are just going to keep doing that I wish I’d never been born.” Kingsolver writes, and this moves me deeply, that she “sat on the floor and held her tightly to keep my own spirit from draining through the soles of my feet.”

We try -- God help us, to keep on keeping on, to try to make sense (or keep trusting) when it seems senseless what’s happening when there’s only misery & mystery beyond explanation, beyond our human insight; -- & there’s mostly silence when we try to pray. The Psalm does not end on a light, happy note, for God’s People are not immune from the ups & downs of life, nor from the cold, wet spray of the heaving breakers & waves on shores of the world around us. Rather, the Psalm ends with the challenge to keep stumbling heavenward, as God’s faithful ones, despite the polarity of these ongoing passions: joy and grief in what we experience in life.

And so we try to keep balanced, or get balanced – somewhere between the extremes, for we need a faith that sustains –something beyond mere optimism & wishful thinking; and & the ability to hang on, God helping us, when all seems lost – to find - as the hymn puts it, that: ‘when all around our soul gives way, He still is all our hope and stay.’

We will continue to receive on one hand - gifts of joy, but also, on the other - injustice and grief. And so with the Psalmist we pray: May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long for your saving help always say, “The Lord is great!” But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.