The Jewish people went into exile severely traumatised by what the Babylonians had inflicted upon them. They would have been devastated and angry. From a distance we can look at their situation and recognise that they brought it on themselves. And perhaps we might think that they should have accepted what happened and pulled themselves together. Their immediate response, however, was to cry out in anger for all that they suffered. This response is validated by its inclusion in the Psalter. When we suffer, God wants us to come to him with our grief and anger. He does not expect us to just resign ourselves to suffering and swallow it stoically. We often suffer things that we bring on ourselves, but this doesn’t mean that we should hide in a corner and swallow our pain. God wants us to come to him with our pain no matter what the situation. God does not gloat over our pain saying, “I told you so”. Even though he did ‘tell us so,’ his response is quite different to this. Our Heavenly Father shows the same compassion whatever the cause of our suffering, whether self-inflicted or not. The Jews realised that they had brought this catastrophe upon themselves, but this didn’t stop them from bringing their grief and anger to God. They suffered terrible evils and they simply came to God with their most immediate response. That’s okay, that’s what you do in a relationship, and the psalms show us what a relationship with God looks like.
Tell God how you feel today.
Read Psalm 79.
