CHAPTER 3: HOPE DURING A FINANCIAL COLLAPSE
Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints!
There is no want to those who fear Him.
Ethelda Lopez was ready to let go and enjoy the golden days of her time on earth. She’d been a hard worker her whole adult life, and she had planned well for retirement. Now, when that pension check arrived each month, she felt a nice sense of security.
Then one month, the check didn’t come.
It had to be a mistake. After Ethelda made a few phone calls, her discomfort increased. A Sacramento accounting firm had managed her investments, but the company was no longer to be found. Every time she phoned she got a repeated recording: “This number is no longer in service.”
Ethelda had worked for AT&T for three decades. Her benefits should have been rock solid. She’d paid into her investment plan all those years, and now she was cut off and cast adrift like a boat from its moorings. Her ultimate worst-case scenario was looming: she couldn’t make the mortgage payment.
Ethelda fired off more phone calls —to mortgage companies, to her political representatives, to bank managers —to anyone at all who might be able to shed light on this craziness. But it was all to no avail. Her money was all gone —lost, embezzled, stolen. What difference did it make how it had happened? She was suddenly, unexpectedly destitute. Every night she cried herself to sleep.
Her worst fears were realized the day she stood on the lawn of the county courthouse and watched as her dream home was auctioned off to strangers. Someone wanted to know why she was crying; did she need some kind of assistance? Oh, yes. But when she tried to explain that it was her home on the auction block, nothing but unintelligible whimpers came out.
Our homes are our sanctuaries, the places where we retreat, relax, and regroup. If even this space is up for grabs, what certainties are left in the world? The idea of losing a home hits us —well, as they say —right where we live.
Loss is an inevitable part of life. Nothing that’s visible is lasting, and one of the first harsh realities we face is the moment we first learn that truth. We lose a friend or we lose a job or we lose our fortune, yet life goes on.
In a very real sense, we’re all nomads —pilgrims bound for an eternal world who are just passing through this physical one. This world is not our home, and when we leave it, any possessions that outlast us will be owned by someone else. The impermanence of this world and all that is in it is actually good news for those of us who have faith in God. It means we’ll be moving on to better things.
But other people live only for the here and now, as typified in Jesus’ story of the prosperous but ignorant homeowner. This man placed his faith in his holdings, and then one night he heard the voice of God: “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?” (Luke 12:20).
The error is in thinking of home, property, and possessions as everything we have. In reality, they’re the least important and most superficial of what we have. Material things dazzle us because of their one advantage: they’re tangible. They can be seen, touched, and held. On the other hand, faith, hope, and the fruit of the Spirit can’t be picked up and examined, bought or sold, photographed or filmed. When we allow the tangible but transient to block our perception of the invisible but imperishable, we’ve lost our perspective on true value.
Henry David Thoreau, the Enlightenment philosopher, understood that principle. In Walden, he observed that people in his village spent their lives accumulating objects that needed constant dusting. They doted on these things, even built their lives around them. Then when they died, men gathered up all their stuff, carted it to the town square, and auctioned it off to other people who would spend their lives dusting it.[1]
I am not denying the value of tangible things. Everything God created is good, including the material world (Genesis 1:31). My wife and I have a houseful of possessions, which we value at varying levels. Family pictures and heirlooms, for example, mean more to us than furnishings or automobiles. We enjoy our stuff, but we never forget that it is stuff. Even so, I have no desire to see it all carted to the town square. I, too, would be terribly upset to lose my home. But I know that such things can and do happen.
So the question arises: When we’ve lost our homes, our possessions, our bank accounts, and our investments, and the very concept of financial security has been swept away —where do we turn? Does God have anything to say that will give us comfort?
Questions don’t come any more rhetorical than that, do they? Of course the Bible has words of comfort. The book of Psalms, our go-to book for comfort, provides a one-stop destination for all the significant emotional issues of life.
One of my favorites, Psalm 37, speaks to our hearts when the fear of calamity is stalking us. David wrote this psalm when he was an older man reflecting on the great questions of his life. Here he divides humanity into two general groups: the righteous and the wicked. Like many of us who have seen good people lose their possessions in economic recessions, David, too, has often seen bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. He wants to know why. Isn’t God at work, rewarding good people and striking down the bad? David thinks, considers all the evidence, and draws this conclusion:
I have been young, and now am old;
Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,
Nor his descendants begging bread.
As David wrote this, he was well aware that wicked people were doing record business and oppressing good, God-fearing people. Earlier in the psalm he addresses this abuse, using the word wicked thirteen times. Here is a typical example:
The wicked have drawn the sword
And have bent their bow,
To cast down the poor and needy,
To slay those who are of upright conduct.
The term wicked refers to the negative moral conditions of guilt, ungodliness, and evil. It’s one of those words we’ve more or less retired. We allow its use only for witches in fairy tales, even though we know that real wickedness abounds all around us.
How should we respond when righteous people lose their possessions to those who are prospering through evil means? We need answers, and the Bible tells us that ultimately it’s an issue of trust. Do we trust God to sort out these glaring injustices? Do we place our hope in Him more than our own finances and possessions?
Let’s explore Psalm 37 and discover seven solid principles that will increase our reliance on God and anchor us in these days of instability.
Decide to Trust in the Lord
Trust in the LORD.
One of the themes of this psalm is the principle of trusting. David uses the word trust three times —in verse 3, cited above, and in the two following references:
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
The LORD shall help them and deliver them;
He shall deliver them from the wicked,
And save them,
Because they trust in Him.
We find true stability in this unstable world only when we trust in God. To trust is to be confident —to possess a strong sense of security. When we trust, we place confidence in someone or something. Trust is not an emotion that just springs up in our hearts as does anger, jealousy, or sadness. It is always a choice based on reason. We use evidence and discernment to conclude that this man or that bank or this investment is “trustworthy.” Yes, God gives us the faith to act, but He first gives us a choice to make.
To illustrate the process, let’s take a look at the stock market, which is based on high-level choices of trust. If you don’t trust in a company, you don’t buy its stock. The stock price represents an index of the overall trust people have in a company. Wise people investigate to determine if there are grounds for trust, then they depend on God to guide their decisions. Having placed their trust in God, they need not live in fear of loss. Even if material loss occurs, God promises to meet the needs of His children, and the Bible is filled with repetitions of that promise.
For example, Psalm 23 tells us that the Lord is our Shepherd, so we shall not lack. Jesus pointed to the birds and the flowers and noted that if God feeds and clothes them, won’t He do the same for His very own children (Matthew 6:25-33)? And here in Psalm 37, David tells us that in his long life, he has never seen God fail to meet needs (verse 25). His experience has proved God to be worthy of our trust. He will work things out.
Paul says the same: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Then, in 2 Corinthians 9:8, the Lord promises that He “is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.”
It’s easy to say we believe in these promises, but when financial anxiety looms like an approaching storm, we’re forced to confront our faith level. Do we really believe God is in control? Easy living does nothing for faith; when the weather is fine, we drift into the illusion of adequacy. We think we have it all figured out and under control.
When we find ourselves with nowhere else to turn, can God help? It’s another obviously rhetorical question, isn’t it? He helps by offering the only stability possible in our lives.
Christian leaders attending a YMCA convention in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1873 witnessed firsthand how God can provide stability when our financial world is collapsing. Presiding over the convention was John Wanamaker, the famous retailer known today as the father of modern advertising. On the second day of the conference, a telegram arrived with shocking news. The banking house of Jay Cooke & Company had failed, resulting in terrible losses for Wanamaker and others at the convention.
When reports of other failing firms flowed into the hall, it became apparent that this was a nationwide financial crash. A tidal wave of panic swept the convention, making it hard to continue.
One of the delegates, Erastus Johnson, came across a comforting Bible verse:
From the end of the earth I will cry to You,
When my heart is overwhelmed;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Based on that verse, Johnson wrote a song that was instantly put to music at the convention and sung over and over. It became a favorite hymn of its day, and the words are still applicable today:
Oh! Sometimes the shadows are deep,
And rough seems the path to the goal,
And sorrows, sometimes how they sweep
Like tempests down over my soul.
Oh, then to the Rock let me fly
To the Rock that is higher than I.
We’ve lived for too long in a world in which nothing is “higher than I.” We’ve placed ourselves above everything else, and where has it taken us? Into a world as broken as Humpty-Dumpty —and just as impossible to put back together. The one great loss we need is the loss of the illusion that we’re in any way self-sufficient. We need the Rock that is higher than we are, higher than this world. We need the Rock upon which we can make our stand, even with empty pockets, even without property or claim, even without a shred of worldly hope, because at the end of our vain hope lies the beginning of the knowledge of God and His grace.
Another great hymn says, “On Christ the solid rock I stand/All other ground is sinking sand.” When the sinking sand of nest eggs and 401(k) plans destroys our sand castle, nothing but trust in God provides stability.
Trust in God will not make the pain go away; it means we know He will provide what we truly need. In Christ our hope stands tall, solid, and untouchable. In Him we have a home that outshines the sun, an inheritance that can never perish, and treasures that can never be taken from us. The deed to our heavenly home is signed and sealed with the blood of Christ; the contract is ratified by the Resurrection. And no one will ever foreclose on that.
Do Things That Honor the Lord
Trust in the LORD, and do good.
Here David tells us that we respond to God first by trusting and then by doing good —trust and obey. Trust is an act of the mind, while obedience is an act of the hands and feet. Once we’ve set our minds on the wisdom of God, we get busy doing the things He would have us do. It’s simple but empowering: “Trust in the LORD, and do good.”
Let’s look first at the trust step —the “think right” step. Paul’s advice to his protégé, Timothy, captures it well: “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (1 Timothy 6:6-8).
Godliness with contentment is the mindset for right thinking —the pinnacle of wisdom in the Christian life. Don’t crave more than you need; demonstrate your trust in God by being content with what you have. It’s why Paul could be stripped of all he owned and thrown into prison, yet still manifest incredible joy. The world is filled with wealthy, miserable people who have everything but contentment. Their money is an empty god that can never fill the vacuum in their souls with peace. Here Paul points those with money toward right thinking: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
Paul stresses the idea of both thinking rightly (trust) and then acting rightly (obedience). Right thinking means trusting in an unshakable God instead of riches that we can’t take with us. Right acting means doing good, which builds a heavenly nest egg of riches waiting just for us.
These insights echo throughout the Scriptures, and they are summed up in Paul’s restatement of Job’s famous observation: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). Someone has observed that life is ultimately like a board game of Monopoly: you go around a few times; you collect paper money and houses; and then, sooner or later, it all goes back in the box.
What we often hear of wealth is true: you can’t take it with you. But you can send it on ahead. Jesus said we can lay up treasures in heaven. That means we can live now in a way that earns a kind of interest for the next life. Whenever we serve a fellow human being, we’re earning that kind of spiritual capital. Jesus said that even giving a cup of cold water to someone in need is rewarded in heaven (Matthew 10:42). He also said that when we amass “treasures in heaven,” no moth can eat them away, and no robber can steal them (Matthew 6:19-20).
The great Christian leader John Wesley lived in a time of financial disruption, and he took those words of Jesus very seriously. The Industrial Revolution was causing a massive move to the cities. Farms were lost, small-town economies collapsed, and epidemics of crime and disease plagued the cities. The rich grew richer, and the poor grew in number.
Wesley saw the crowds of hurting people as Jesus would see them, and he designed ministries to care for them. His ministry became a financial success, and his annual salary grew to be the modern-day equivalent of $160,000. Wesley calculated the small sum that he really needed and gave the rest away. He saw it as investing in the things of God, which never perish. Wesley said, “If I leave behind me ten pounds, . . . you and all mankind [can] bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber.”[2]
By no means was John Wesley against the idea of wealth; his problem was with “storing up treasures on earth” when wealth could be such a marvelous tool for ministry. He once preached a sermon in which he proposed the best attitude we can have toward wealth: “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”[3]
When we do things that honor the Lord, we invest in eternity.
Dwell on the Faithfulness of the Lord
Feed on His faithfulness.
Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
These verses draw our attention to the faithfulness of the Lord. But let’s take a peek at the final verse of Psalm 37 to learn the outcome of God’s faithfulness:
The LORD shall help them and deliver them;
He shall deliver them from the wicked,
And save them,
Because they trust in Him.
To trust in Him is to respond in faith to His faithfulness. David knew from experience that God rewards faith with blessings. As a young man, David had been anointed as the next king of Israel. Then he spent years living in forests and caves as the reigning king hunted him down. He had to do more than merely assent to the idea of God’s faithfulness —he had to stake his life on it. Life was hard during those long, perilous years. But in time, Saul died, David became king, and he could attest to the fact that God keeps His promises.
Timothy George, the dean of Beeson Divinity School, recalls a story from one of his professors, Dr. Gardner Taylor, who had once preached in Louisiana. He had been assigned to a poor, rural church with a sanctuary lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. One evening he was preaching the Gospel with gusto when suddenly the power went out. Dr. Taylor had no idea what the protocol might be, so he stumbled around in the dark until an elderly deacon cried out, “Preach on, brother! We can still see Jesus in the dark!”
Sometimes, George concludes, we see Him best in the dark. “And the good news of the gospel is that whether or not we can see him in the dark, he can see us in the dark.”[4]
Delight Yourself in the Lord
Delight yourself also in the LORD,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Even when our circumstances hold nothing delightful for us, we find delight in the Lord. We could be facing loss and oppression, but these things don’t define us. Because we put our hope in God, we find an inner joy in Him.
What gives you delight? The word refers to extreme satisfaction or gratification. I find delight in a good football game or in Frank Sinatra singing a terrific old song. I find deeper delight in having my family all around and hearing about what’s new in the world of my grandchildren. One of my deepest delights is time alone with my wife, my soul mate of all these years. No one on earth knows me as she does, and we create our own little world when we’re together.
But my deepest delight is found in the Lord. I can go to Him no matter what is happening in my world, and the amazing truth is that He finds delight in me. I can’t even begin to imagine why, but He does. My children and grandchildren realize that there’s never a time when I’m not overjoyed to see them. God has this kind of delight in His children, and we should delight in Him —not because we “ought to” but because there is no deeper joy in life.
David squeezed every drop out of life the way some do an orange. He had many delights, many gifts. He could sing, he could dance, he could write poetry, he could devise battle plans, and he had an aching desire to design a temple for God. He was a passionate man who found the best in life, and he wanted us to know that one’s greatest delight is found in the knowledge of God. And as usual, there’s a breathtaking promise attached to that delight. The promise is that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts. Can anything so wonderful be true? Absolutely! But it’s important to understand this promise. It isn’t a shortcut to prosperity, as some ill-informed preachers claim. We don’t delight in the Lord so that He will give us what we want. That approach confuses faith with greed.
No, when we find true and genuine pleasure in God, with no thought of gain other than gaining intimacy with Him, we find our own desires coming into conformance with His desires. We begin to live in His will, and we pray accordingly. We find the joy of the Lord by following the Lord of joy into His joy. The following promises capture this idea:
He said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
When things go wrong and loss overtakes us, misery often follows. And the more we struggle against the pit of discouragement, the deeper it becomes. But if we’ve placed our hope in God no matter what, His joy becomes our strength. We delight in Him and find new energy, new insights, and new resources to keep on going.
How can we delight in God or anything else when our world is crashing down on us? We can begin by turning to Psalm 119, which uses the word delight six times and shows us the first step in finding it.
I will delight myself in Your statutes;
I will not forget Your word.
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments,
For I delight in it.
The proud have forged a lie against me,
But I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart.
Their heart is as fat as grease,
But I delight in Your law.
Let Your tender mercies come to me, that I may live;
For Your law is my delight.
Unless Your law had been my delight,
I would then have perished in my affliction.
I long for Your salvation, O LORD,
And Your law is my delight.
Did you pick up on the common theme these six verses express? The first step in delighting in God is to delight in His Word. Immersing ourselves in the Word of God reveals a God we can delight in. The psalmist takes such a delight in God’s Word that he uses every possible term to express the range of its meaning: statutes, commandments, precepts, law. In the same way, other writers of Scripture delight in God by using His various names. Isn’t that just what people do when they’re in love? They come up with pet names for their beloved, and each name has a special meaning that conveys a particular facet of the delight they find.
Delighting in God’s Word leads us to delight in God, and delight in God drives away fear.
Dedicate Your Life to the Lord
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
Having found our deepest delight in God, we realize that we must give all of our lives to Him. This isn’t a temporary commitment, a halfway intention, or the feeling of a moment. It’s a choice and a contract of the heart. As in marriage, we commit ourselves to that partnership for the rest of our lives.
How does committing to the Lord help us in times of material loss? In committing to Him, we cast all our burdens upon Him. He becomes our life —the place where we bring our problems, our joys, our marriages, our families, our careers. Life and happiness are no longer dependent on financial success or material possessions. It’s now all about Him.
The verse above ends with the phrase “And He shall bring it to pass.” When we put our hope in Him, depend on Him, and respond to Him in faith, He will make our greatest dreams come true by elevating them from the material to the eternal.
God is also the answer when our losses leave us unable to help ourselves:
The helpless commits himself to You;
You are the helper of the fatherless.
When we dedicate ourselves to God, helpless becomes a word without meaning. When we’ve lost our jobs, our houses, or our savings, and debt or bankruptcy stares us in the face, it’s as if we’re crushed under the weight of an enormous sack filled with every problem facing us. It’s a burden too heavy to bear. We can’t take another step. We can’t lift it —but God can. He gently says, “May I take that upon Myself? My shoulders are stronger.” As we say yes, life brightens and becomes joyful.
Cast your burden on the LORD,
And He shall sustain you;
He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.
[Cast] all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
Why keep struggling with your losses on your own? Why not give the burden to Him? Nothing could be more liberating.
William Carey, the “father of modern missions,” established a large print shop in Serampore, India, where he worked for years translating the Bible into many Indian languages.
On March 11, 1812, Carey had to travel to another town. His associate, William Ward, was working late when suddenly he smelled smoke. He leaped up to discover black clouds belching from the printing room. He screamed for help, and workers carried water from the nearby river until 2 a.m. But it was to no avail; nearly everything was destroyed.
The next day, missionary Joshua Marshman entered a Calcutta classroom where Carey was teaching. He placed a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, “I can think of no easy way to break the news. The print shop burned to the ground last night.”
Gone was Carey’s massive translation work of nearly twenty years: a dictionary, two grammar books, and whole versions of the Bible. Gone were sets of type for fourteen Eastern languages, twelve hundred reams of paper, fifty-five thousand printed sheets, and thirty pages of his Bengal dictionary. Gone was his complete library. “The work of years —gone in a moment,” he whispered.
In that moment he understood the pain of loss. “The loss is heavy,” he wrote, “but as traveling a road the second time is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first time, so I trust the work will lose nothing of real value. We are not discouraged; indeed the work is already begun again in every language. We are cast down but not in despair.”
William Carey had dedicated his life to God, and he trusted Him to bring blessings in the ashes of his dreams. “There are grave difficulties on every hand,” he once wrote, “and more are looming ahead. Therefore we must go forward.” As Carey moved forward, so did God. News of the fire caused all England to start talking about William Carey. Money for support flowed in. Volunteers enlisted to help. The print shop was rebuilt and enlarged. By 1832, complete Bibles, New Testaments, or separate books of Scripture had issued from the press in forty-four languages and dialects.[5]
Because Carey had dedicated his life to God, he understood what it meant to cast all his burdens on the Lord, even when all seemed lost.
Download Your Worry to the Lord
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
Times of economic chaos produce anxiety, and for believers, these times can become a real challenge to faith.
Remember, there are two strategies for facing the future: with fear or with faith. If you’ve decided to follow Christ, that means walking by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7). That does not mean Satan will forget about you. He will try to chip away at your faith by pointing you to the fear of the moment. At this time in our nation, that fear focuses heavily on finances. But fear about money —or about anything, for that matter —is never part of God’s plan for us. As Paul writes, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). Embed this verse in your mind, and bring it to the forefront whenever you feel that first pang of fear.
Many other Bible promises will strengthen your faith and help you overcome the fear of the moment:
- Romans 8:35-39 assures us that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God.
- First John 4:18 reminds us that God’s perfect love casts out our fear.
- Philippians 4:6-7 invites us to lay our anxieties before God by faith with thanksgiving, allowing the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
We need to understand that faith in God does not immunize us from financial failure. As long as we live in this fallen world, there will be no such thing as complete financial security. There is no ultimate security in anything but the grace of God. To be human means that loss, including heartbreaking loss, is always possible. As tough as times are, they can and may become much worse. But faith in God assures us that He holds our lives in His powerful, loving hands, which means no collapses, no losses, and no fears can truly harm us. As the Lord of this universe, He is, indeed, too big to fail.
Because God loves and cares for us, David urges us not to worry, or as he puts it, “Do not fret.” This phrase do not fret essentially means “relax; don’t react.” It occurs only four times in the entire Bible —three times in Psalm 37 and once in Proverbs.
- Psalm 37:1: “Do not fret because of evildoers.”
- Psalm 37:7: “Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way.”
- Psalm 37:8: “Do not fret —it only causes harm.”
- Proverbs 24:19: “Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the wicked.”
The English word fret comes from the Old English fretan, meaning “to devour, to eat, to gnaw into something.” The Hebrew word David used is charah, which has at its root the idea of “growing warm” and “blazing up.”
Here we have a mix of two metaphors illustrating the same idea —a word picture of gnawing and a word picture of fire. In the first metaphor, fretting is seen as a rat inside your soul, gnawing away at your joy and peace. (I didn’t say it was a pretty picture. But it’s a true one.)
The fire metaphor pictures Satan as the arsonist of hellfire, setting blazes of distress inside your heart. Both pictures illustrate the destructiveness of fretting. In Psalm 37 David tells us not to put up with fretting: kill the rats and douse the fires, because fretting will kill you from the inside out.
Someone has observed that the prosperous people of the previous generation known as the “jet set” have now become the “fret set.” Once they were flying high, and now they’re flying off the handle.
One of the most frustrating things about massive losses is that we look around and see evil people prospering —sometimes even because of their evil. It violates our sense of justice. But in Psalm 37 David assures us that justice will be done. God is not yet finished with these people. Five times in this psalm, David gives us reason not to envy the prosperous wicked:
They shall soon be cut down like the grass,
And wither as the green herb.
For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more;
Indeed, you will look carefully for his place,
But it shall be no more.
The wicked shall perish;
And the enemies of the LORD,
Like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish.
Into smoke they shall vanish away.
When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.
I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a native green tree.
Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more;
Indeed I sought him, but he could not be found.
As a creative exercise, pastor and author Leonard Griffith transplanted Rip Van Winkle, the beloved Washington Irving character, into 1930s Germany. You remember the story: Rip falls asleep for twenty years, then walks through town to find that everything has changed and no one remembers him.
In Griffith’s version, Van Winkle is horrified as he watches Hitler rise to power and begin conquering Europe. He retreats into the Alps to get away from the terrifying events. There he falls asleep. When he wakes up, the 1950s are underway and the world is vastly different. The Nazis are gone —no more swastikas, no more eager Hitler youth, no more arrogant attitudes of world domination. The masterminds of the Third Reich are all dead or imprisoned or being hunted down.
Rip Van Winkle then understands the words of the psalmist: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree. Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more.”[6]
Many in the 1930s wondered why God allowed the Nazis to prosper. He didn’t. He dealt with them by His own timetable, and He dealt with them thoroughly.
There’s another point to be considered here. What if the wrong people do come out on top in this life? Would we really want to trade our kind of security for theirs? Spurgeon wrote, “What if wicked devices succeed and your own plans are defeated! There is more of the love of God in your defeats than in the successes of the wicked.”[7]
Discipline Yourself to Wait on the Lord
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him.
Waiting doesn’t come easily for us. In this age of instant gratification, we’re conditioned not to wait for anything. If the fast-food line is too long, we rush to the restaurant across the street. If the TV show doesn’t quickly become interesting, we surf impatiently through hundreds of channels. If the car ahead doesn’t move the instant the traffic light changes, we hit the horn.
When we face loss, we know we must trust God’s timetable for dealing with it. But what we’d like better is for Him to accede to ours. The fact that we cannot see into the future can convince us that the future is up for grabs. But rest assured, God is completely in control. Though His timing may seem slow to us, from the viewpoint of eternity, it is perfect. God is never early and never late.
When we truly believe this, we acquire the mind of Christ, which enables us to wait on Him with patience and trust. Waiting means . . .
- Not lagging behind His leading and direction
- Not walking ahead of His leading and direction
- Not ignoring His leading and direction
- Not fretting about what He is doing or planning for you
The word wait is found two additional times in this psalm:
Evildoers shall be cut off;
But those who wait on the LORD,
They shall inherit the earth.
Wait on the LORD,
And keep His way,
And He shall exalt you to inherit the land.
Waiting is difficult in the face of loss, but it’s a discipline with a huge payoff. Those who wait on the Lord will “inherit the earth” because those pushers and shovers in life’s express line have all burned out, victims of their own impatience. Patient people are happier and healthier, and God will exalt them.
One writer explained that there are two kinds of faith: one based on if and the other on though. The first says, “If everything goes the way I want, then I’ll agree that God is good.” The other says, “Though evil may prosper, though I may sweat in Gethsemane, though my road leads to Calvary —even so, I trust in God.” The first wants instant results; the second has learned the wisdom of waiting, as Job did when he cried out, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).[8]
Almost two hundred years ago, our nation went through economic upheaval: the Panic of 1837. Anna and Susan Warner and their father, Henry Warner, lived in a mansion filled with art treasures, high-class furnishings, and an army of servants. Then came the deluge.
The market crashed and took Henry Warner’s investments down with it. The family lost everything and, deeply in debt, moved to a decrepit old house up the river from New York City. Henry’s financial collapse devastated him emotionally, and he was never the same. The daughters, accustomed to expensive parties and the social whirl, now realized they had to pitch in to work down the family’s staggering debt.
All they could think to do was write. Though they struggled to find a publisher, eventually Putnam accepted Susan Warner’s novel The Wide, Wide World. Success followed. The sisters wrote more than one hundred books, all built on the foundation of the Gospel that warmed their lives. One of the books, Say and Seal, contained a little poem Anna had woven into the story. It began with the words “Jesus loves me, this I know.” Songwriter William Bradbury added music, and now “Jesus Loves Me” is loved throughout the world. Untold millions of children have first encountered Christ through its simple yet powerful words. In 1943, when John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 was sunk in the Solomon Islands, local islanders and American marines sang the song as they rescued the survivors. You may have sung it as a child. I did.
If you had been part of this disconsolate family, standing in the ashes of financial failure and watching as your lifetime possessions were hauled away, you might have thought that life was unfair. But if you knew the ways of God, you might have known even then that He had special things in mind. From the cold rubble and debris of today’s misfortune, God raises the bricks and beams of tomorrow’s miracle.
Yes, we know that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28), but this long-term promise does not provide a quick fix for the heartbreak of loss. There’s no bypass to avoid it. Yet the promise remains true, and it gives us something to cling to and focus on through the blur of our tears.
The devil may win today, but the God who owns tomorrow “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-12, NIV).
Philip Yancey points out that two of the primary days we’ve named on the church calendar are Good Friday and Easter Sunday. One held the worst event imaginable, and the other the greatest. Yet we live most of life on the day between —Saturday —a day we’ve given no special name. Like the disciples, we sit in the wake of life’s heartbreak with no clue that what the morning will bring is brighter than our most brilliant dreams.
Life is about deciding how to live in that interim between cross and crown. Just how much do we trust God? Do we really believe He can take a world that includes genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, inner-city ghettos, capacity prisons, and wipe out losses, then fashion something beautiful out of it? We know what Friday feels like. Is there going to be a Sunday?
Yancey observes that the day of Christ’s beatings, crucifixion, and death is called Good Friday. It only earns that adjective in light of Sunday’s developments. The empty tomb refashions the shame of the Cross into a victory. Easter, says Yancey, offers a clue into the greater workings of God. Our souls rise above the loss of Friday, knowing that blessing will come on Sunday. In the meantime, Saturday becomes a day of waiting.[9]
Waiting is not always a bad thing; it can bring its own joy —the thrill of anticipation. Do you remember waiting for Christmas as a child? Waiting for your wedding day? Waiting for something good makes the heart sing. It fills us with hope. It changes us internally so that the ups and downs of this fickle, undependable life can exert no real power over us. The world may take away our homes and every cent we have. We may cry out, but our hope is intact because our losses are only a reminder of the grand gift that, once received, can never be lost. And it’s worth waiting for.