Is God Is Enough?

Reflections for this date are based on the following scripture passages:

Psalms 73

"What is in it for me?" This question tends to be the spoken or unspoken question with which we approach most any concern. When considering how we will relate to God it is a primary concern. "If I follow God and buy in to His instructions and try to live by them, how will I benefit?"

This was the struggle had by the writer of Psalms 73. Though he was a follower of God, he saw how the wicked lived. They had no concern about God, living their lives as they wished. Money and power were their pursuits and they seemed to have everything. People did their bidding for them and looked up to them. Was this not the life?

He began to doubt whether or not it was in his best interest to keep worshipping God. "Did I purify my heart and wash my hands in innocence for nothing?" (Psalms 73:13) This was the question he began to ask himself. It seemed to him that all he had were problems while the wicked had everything. But then he entered God's sanctuary and God opened up his thinking and life came into perspective for him. He realized he had been a fool to even think like this, for it lacked understanding.

While we live this life, what we see is all we think about. But this is not all there is. There is an eternity to come and by comparison this life is like a puff of smoke that fades quickly away. As for the wicked, the psalmist realized in God's presence that their lives placed them "in slippery places," and they would eventually "fall into ruin." (73:18) "How suddenly they become a desolation! They come to an end, swept away by terrors." (73:19) Such was the plight of the wicked. As for the psalmist, he determined that, "God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever . . . I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, so I can tell about all You do." (73:26, 28)

How easily our thinking is drawn to the thinking with which the psalmist struggled and we are tempted to throw in the towel and forget about God. But as the psalmist entered God's sanctuary, we must every day enter God's presence in prayer and reading of His Word. Otherwise we lose perspective.