God Implored to Rescue His People from Their Calamities.
For the choir director; set to [a]El Shoshannim; [b]Eduth. A Psalm of Asaph.
80 Oh, give ear, Shepherd of Israel,
You who lead Joseph like a flock;
You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth!
2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your power
And come to save us!
3 O God, restore us
And cause Your face to shine upon us, [c]and we will be saved.4 O Lord God of hosts,
How long will You [d]be angry with the prayer of Your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears,
And You have made them to drink tears in [e]large measure.
6 You make us [f]an object of contention to our neighbors,
And our enemies laugh among themselves.
7 O God of hosts, restore us
And cause Your face to shine upon us, [g]and we will be saved.
As I sit here with one of our cats on my lap, an interesting contrast comes to mind. Here the psalmist is imploring God to restore Israel, to make His “face to shine” upon them, and to save them. And here on my lap, Hux is insatiable, he wants (more of) my attention, but I’m only human. I can’t do three things at once, or even two. But God can.
When the psalmist wrote this, it wasn’t as if God was busy elsewhere and would get to Israel again when He had time. No, the Israelites were right where God intended for them to be, which is a hard thing to think about, even for us. For the Israelites to be restored, they had to eat the “bread of tears” and “drink tears in large measure.”
Hopefully that isn’t what it takes for you to be restored and rescued, but it might be. Yet whatever the case, wherever you may be, you can pray the prayer of the psalmist. There was no question for him of whether God could restore them, or could save them. But did His face shine upon them? Did they make Him smile, did they bring delight to His eyes?
As David wrote in Psalm 51, God did not delight in the animal sacrifices. They were necessary, but it wasn’t the sacrifice He desired. Likewise, we cannot be restored by any good deeds that we do. No, what God desired was a “broken and contrite” spirit. That seems an odd thing to delight in, but it means we are properly humble, and are not puffed up with pride in our own eyes. It also means our heart is in it, and we’re actually sorry for how we’ve broken His heart.
If you’re a parent, no doubt you’ve heard your kid(s) say “sorry” and immediately wondered (or asked), “did you mean it?” God doesn’t have to ask, He knows our heart already. When we truly seek Him, we will find Him, and His face will smile upon us, and He will restore us completely.