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Morning Worship - 10/18/09 - Surrounded By Needs
Psalm 22:1-15
I want to share three stories with you. Here’s the first:
An exhausted young mother is said to have dragged herself to the telephone when it rang, listening with relief to the kindly voice on the other end. “How are you, sweetheart? What kind of day are you having?”
“Oh, Mother,” said the woman, “I’m having such a bad day. The baby won’t eat, the washing machine broke down, the house is a mess, we’re having two couples over for dinner tonight and I haven’t had a chance to go shopping yet. And to top it off, I just sprained my ankle.”
The mother was overwhelmed with sympathy. “Oh, honey,” she said, “sit down, relax and just close your eyes. I’ll be over in half an hour. I’ll do the shopping, clean the house and cook your dinner for you. I’ll feed the baby, and I’ll call a repairman to fix the washing machine. Now stop crying. I’ll do everything. In fact, I’ll even call Sean at the office and ask him to come home and help out.”
“Sean?” said the housewife. “Who’s Sean?”
“Why, your husband, of course!”
“You mean Jim, don’t you? You’ll call Jim at the store.”
“Isn’t this Julie?”
“No, it’s Lindy.”
“Oh,” said the caller, “I must have dialed the wrong number. I’m sorry.”
There was a long silence. Then the desperate young homemaker asked, “Does this mean you’re not coming over?”
Here’s the second: Josh isn’t rolling in money, but he makes a decent living, pays his bills on time and has some savings. He isn’t in financial difficulty himself, but he has a brother-in-law who can’t seem to manage money well and is always in financial need. Josh likes his brother-in-law and has a hard time saying no when, from time to time, his relative taps him for a loan, which he almost never pays back. Josh feels bad for his brother-in-law, and, though he’d rather not, he usually ends up helping him.
Josh is a law-abiding citizen himself, but his best friend from high school has gotten into some trouble and is now in prison. His friend’s family won’t have anything to do with him, so the friend reaches out to Josh, asking him to visit and help him with some needs. Josh does what he can, but each time he visits his friend, he comes away feeling really depressed. He dreads receiving a letter from his imprisoned friend because each time, his friend is asking him to do something for him, often things that push Josh beyond his comfort zone — like talking to a judge on his friend’s behalf.
Josh is in good health himself, but his widower father isn’t. And because Josh is an only child, he spends a lot of time running his father to doctor’s appointments, getting his groceries, checking in on him.
Josh and his wife have raised their children, but they are often called on by their kids to look after their grandchildren. They like their grandchildren, but their kids often act like Dad and Mom have nothing else to do but to babysit. They don’t seem to consider what else they may have going on in their lives.
Josh is handy around the house and keeps his own place up pretty well, but his wife recently volunteered him to help a neighbor with his home remodeling project — without asking him. The neighbor isn’t as skilled as Josh is, so some of the more difficult tasks fall to Josh to complete.
A few years ago, Josh did a good job chairing a committee to pass a levy for the public schools. As a result, any time any local group needs someone to head a committee, one of the first people they ask is Josh. And because he tries to be a responsible person, he accepts the assignments when he can.
While Josh’s own life is on an even keel, he’s being pulled one way and then another by the demands others are placing on him, and frankly, it exhausts him. Then one Sunday, Josh went to church and heard a sermon about how everybody should be doing more to fulfill Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor.” Josh found himself thinking that if he had any more neighbors to love, it would be the death of him. In fact, Josh felt like he was surrounded by people with their hands extended toward him, saying, “Help me!” “Feed me!” “Care for me!” “Lead me!” “Guide me!” “Do this for me!” “Do that for me!”
Does Josh sound like anybody you know?
You’ve heard about Lindy’s difficulties and Josh’s on-going predicament. Here’s the third story. The psalmist says:
Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water ... (vv. 12-14).
The psalmist’s own life is in order, but he finds himself being pulled down by the needs of others.
Bashan was a region of ancient Israel northeast of the Sea of Galilee, in what is today southern Syria. One thing it was known for was the cattle raised there. During certain times of the year, the cattle were allowed to forage in free-range fashion. In the more densely populated areas, a herdsman might be employed to make sure the animals did no harm, but out in the countryside, the herds were left unsupervised. While grazing, some of the beasts took on the behavior of wild animals. Thus, it was possible that some hapless person in Bashan might suddenly find himself surrounded by bulls, and the potential for the animals to inflict serious bodily harm was quite real.
The bulls of Bashan were an actual situation for those folks. They are a figure of speech for us, but one that we easily understand. The bulls represent demands we cannot ignore, obligations we cannot get out of, duties we cannot shirk, responsibilities we cannot evade.
And the “cannot” part of that statement is real. Some observers seeing Josh’s situation might conclude that Josh simply needs to learn how to say “no,” but, in fact, that’s not the solution. Josh wants to be the sort of person who can be counted on, who doesn’t turn away from the generations on either side of him when they’re in need. He values friendship, and he takes seriously the biblical instruction to love his neighbor. It isn’t so much that he wants to get out of these responsibilities — only that he wishes he had enough time and energy to deal adequately with them and still have a little left for himself. He doesn’t mind feeding an occasional bull from Bashan, but he doesn’t like being surrounded.
But, that’s often how it is. People with needs are everywhere, and some of them intersect with us. Like the older woman who is troubled by the amount of mail she was receiving that solicited donations for various worthy causes. She said if she gave just $5 to each of them, she would use every penny of her limited retirement income. She understood she couldn’t support them all, but she was a caring person, and it made her feel sad that she had to turn some away. But because she had donated to a few, her name had been sold to other mailing lists, and the appeals kept coming. She felt surrounded by the bulls of Bashan with their mouths open.
Another group of people who knows that “surrounded” feeling is the so-called “sandwich generation” — people, usually in midlife, who are caring for aging parents while still raising their own children. It’s noteworthy that in 2006, Merriam-Webster officially added the term ‘Sandwich Generation’ to its dictionary, and in the United States, July has now been designated Sandwich Generation Month. The stress of being in that circumstance has been recognized. To be clear, it isn’t that members of that generation want either their parents or their children to go away; they just want more energy and time to handle everything.
Parents of young children often hear the roar of the bulls of Bashan, too.
So notice, please, what the psalmist prayed: “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near” (v. 11). Like you, he was quite aware of the close proximity of the demands on his life. That’s when the bulls are dangerous, of course, when they’re right beside you, breathing down your neck. What the psalmist prays for, however, is not for God to make the bulls go away, but only for God to be as close to him as they are. Or, to put it in words that we might pray, “Be as near to me as my troubles are.”
That’s actually a good prayer to pray, because for most of us, shooing the surrounding bulls away isn’t an option — at least shooing all of them away isn’t an option, and in some cases, we wouldn’t want it to be. But if we can sense that God is as close to us as are the demands on us, we have an additional source of energy for dealing with them. Phillips Brooks, a noted preacher from the 19th century, put it this way: “I do not pray for a lighter load but for a stronger back.”
It may sound odd to speak of God as a source of energy for us personally, but that is exactly the testimony of Scripture. Consider these words from Isaiah 40:
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31).
That passage is no guarantee against becoming weary, but its assurance is in the renewal God promises to those who “wait for the Lord,” which is a way of saying that we need to take time to listen for him. That’s something we may be inclined to skip when we’re overloaded. So take this sentence to heart: “I’ve got a lot to do today, so I need to spend some extra time in prayer.” And the apostle Paul said, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), meaning he stayed regularly in touch with the strength-giving God.
Strength for meeting the demands of each day is God’s gift to people who wait for him.
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