I commit my distress to God and leave it in his hands

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The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is I commit my distress to God and leave it in his hands.

My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this:

Exodus 25-26 – Though God requires no physical house, it is good to maintain a space of worship that reminds us we are in the presence of God. The space and symbols in the space help us to focus on God and make us reverent.
Mark 10 – Leaders must be servants to all. Those who serve shall lead. Faith will heal you of your infirmities. Also, when I need God’s help, I should be bold, cry out and not be shy about asking for it, and not let others keep me from approaching God with my requests. God responds to our persistence and our urgency.
Psalms 38 – I commit my distress to God and leave it in his hands. I trust him not to lay more on me than I can bear and to thwart my enemies for me.
Proverbs 7 – Keep the precepts of God and wisdom close. Internalize them so recalling them in every situation is as easy as breathing.

The message that spoke to me the loudest this morning was the story of Bartimaeus crying out for Jesus to heal him of his blindness. While he had an actual visual impairment, I frequently read this passage in terms of all of the ways that I, myself, can be metaphorically blind to the spiritual world, the goodness of God, and what I ought to be doing.

Bartimaeus is a great example of someone who has such a great need for healing that he foregoes all sense of decorum and cries out loudly to Jesus as he is passing by, even though his friends are telling him to be quiet and respectful. His need is greater than any social norms in this situation, and he cries out even louder. This gets Jesus’ attention and Jesus asks him what he wants. Bartimaeus asks Jesus to give him his sight back, and Jesus heals him, saying his faith has saved him. Once again, someone asks for healing, and Jesus not only heals him but gives him salvation.

In Psalms 38 we see someone crying out to God in much the same way Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus. He is desperate, disabled by the weight of his sins. He describes the misery he is in as a disease, disabling to the point of spiritual deafness and having lost the ability to speak. People have shunned him because of his infirmity, and he has accumulated many enemies. And yet he cries out from deep within himself for God to heal him and rescue him.

Both readings in Psalms and Mark today are about the same thing: being so miserable and desperate in a situation that one has nothing to lose by crying out loudly and boldly to God for healing and restoration. The message in Mark is that when we do this Jesus will heal us every single time. When it feels like we have been forever in a miserable situation (usually of our own making but, as in Bartimaeus’ case, perhaps simply as a result of an illness, injury, or genetics–the luck of the draw), all we need to do is cry out to God. I can speak from my own experience when I say that when we do we often wonder why we waited so long.

In Proverbs 7 we see the remedy for staying out of such miserable spiritual darkness: keep God’s precepts close and honor them. This is the primary reason I read the Bible every day. It reminds me who I am and who God is, and it helps me keep those precepts close. It keeps me from becoming spiritually blind. It “combs out my tangled up brain.” (Danny Daniels)

That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today?

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This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.”

To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts.

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