Reconcile the Irreconcilable

Psalm 89 is a psalm that depicts the inner turmoil which believers in the Lord experience while attempting to understand the vicissitudes of life’s difficulties in contrast to the nature of God. The psalmist was being torn by the record of the Lord God’s promise to King David of a perpetual dynasty and his apparent abandonment of that promise as the dynasty was facing doom and destruction.

Because the Lord God has revealed both Himself and His nature through His marvelous incomprehensible acts in history and His Word, believers struggle to reconcile this revelation of His power and promises with the contradictions being faced in life.

Is there a way to reconcile these two seeming contradictions? As we’ll discover in this website devotion, thankfully there is.

In verse one the psalmist first commits himself to rehearsing in song what the Lord God has said about Himself and His nature. When facing inner turbulence between what we know by faith and what we experience in life we would do well to do the same. The power of singing praises to the Lord is personally therapeutic and instructive in preparing subsequent generations as they experience their particular perplexing issues.

Verse two is a declaration of faith that contrasts the instability of this temporal life that is often unloving and vicious with the fact that the Lord God’s faithfulness and love are eternal and unchanging, settled and expressed in that realm beyond this life. We do well when we look beyond the immediate circumstances we find ourselves entangled with as we refocus our attention upon the immutable nature of the Lord God’s love and faithfulness.

Verses three and four are faith expressions in the dependability of the Lord God to not only make but also to keep the promises He makes in history. When facing the insoluble issues that cause us much angst, faith reminds that though we have limitations as finite being that often prevent us from doing what we wish we could do, the Lord God who is infinite has no such limitations.
Verses five through thirteen express an unshakable faith in the uniqueness of the Lord God as Creator and Sustainer. The refrain of faith that comes bubbling up into our souls like water from an artesian well that there is no other God who is Almighty and Faithful to both Himself and His people answers the thirst of every believer’s heart for resolution of what seem to unanswerable.

Notice that faith in the Lord God is called for as the only response that can reconcile the irreconcilable. The gift of faith from the Lord God is a different way of knowing that transcends both intellectual understanding as well as emotional responses while containing elements of both. Faith, as a superior way of knowing, distinguishes between that which is temporal and that which is eternal. Faith recognizes to be sure, that the Eternal God is at work in this temporal experience we call time, however, He IS NOT bound by any temporal insistences from any created being for adherence to an alternative “absolute” as He ALONE is eternal and absolute. Faith recognizes that the limitations of human intellect and emotions, due to the Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, are in desperate need of the repairing work of continuing revelation from the Lord God, thus changing the question from “why are things the way they are?” to “how shall we respond to the Lord God to the things that are?”

We who stand on this side of history regarding the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus are fortunate indeed to know that in Jesus, the eternal implications of the promise made to David have been fulfilled. In light of the greatest revelation of God that is in Christ, we are called to greater faith responses in facing life’s vexing events, looking back to the Lord God’s faithful, promise keeping love shown in Christ while simultaneously anticipating that appointed day when time WILL be eclipsed by the return of Jesus to completely fulfill all of the Lord God’s promises!

What will be our response when we face irreconcilable struggles? Will we depend upon our own intellect to resolve them? Will we be swallowed up by the pain and emotion of circumstance? Or will we respond in faith to the ONLY ONE who has the willingness of love, the wisdom of His eternal plan and capacity to act?