The community sang this together, remembering how God had acted for their ancestors. We've heard of the miracles with our own ears, they say, almost defensively. And then the tone shifts: but now you've cast us off. How could the same God who did those things abandon them now?
I recognize this experience from my own life. You remember a time when God moved so clearly, so undeniably. You saw it with your own eyes. And then circumstances change, and you start to doubt whether that God still exists. Did I imagine it? Was I mistaken?
The psalm refuses to let go of what it knows to be true about God's nature, even while living in present abandonment. That's the difficult work of faith: holding both the memory of God's faithfulness and the current experience of his silence. Not resolving the tension, but living inside it.
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