psalm 102: living in pain and living with gratitude 5th week lent tuesday
What
does psalm 102 remind us of?
First
it reminds us to accept pain as part of life.
In life we will be hurt. There
will always be frustrations, trials, sicknesses, suffering. Things do not always come out as we expect
them. Even our relationship with God
will not turn out as expected. That is
why if we read the entire psalm included in the prayer are complaints and
protest against God – as having neglected his people, as being too slow to hear
and to act. We don't always get what we
want. I think this is a good reminder
for all of us. In the seminary I always
make it a point to make our high school seminarians learn this fact of life –
that we always don't get what we want, that we should always learn to take no
for an answer and that is how we grow to adulthood. We may sulk for a time, we
make react in disgust, we may make sunggod because of the no or because of the
pain, or because of things we could not understand, but we have to move on with
life, we accept it and learn to live with it.
This is what Psalm 102 is reminding us.
Not all our prayers will be heard, we will not be persevered and
shielded from pain and suffering. But we
need to move on, to learn to life with whatever life presents to us. And this is the importance of the second
point.
Second
in order to learn to live with suffering, pain and so many unmet expectations,
desire, wishes and prayers, we need to learn to surrender everything to God.
Surrender means to abandon oneself to God's loving care. Of course, we do what we can but we also need
to understand that we can only do so much.
We believe that God has always our good in mind.
Live
in gratitude. Do not live in an
environment where all we can see is our lack, our needs, our weaknesses, our deficiencies. Living in gratitude is to be conscious that
God has already provided us with so many things in life. Only when we have seen life like this can we
live generously for others.
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