Letting God Be God (06/25/2024)

A group of us were talking about our prayer and it was suggested that often we feel our concerns and needs are so minor on the grand scale of needs in this world that we fail to bring them to the LORD. I know I have been guilty of this myself so many times. I give myself the “put on your big girl shoes and deal with it” talk. But as our group were discussing this frequent dilemma for us, I remembered and shared my studies of the psalms, one psalm in particular, psalm 50 that beckons us to bring our needs, all of them to the LORD, and let God be God.

In Psalm 50, the LORD speaks to us about appropriate sacrifices as well as turning to the LORD in our need. The psalm (PS 50:14-15) reads:

“Offer praise as your sacrifice to God; 

fulfill your vows to the Most High.

Then call on me on the day of distress; 

I will rescue you, and you shall honor me.”

I shared with the group how my teacher, a rabbi, opened the psalm’s meaning for me. He explained that we are to recognize our reliance upon, our dependence upon the LORD, and in doing so, bring our needs, all of them, to the LORD. In doing this, we honor the LORD. He summed it up for our class, “Let God be God.”

There is no need too small. Whatever we are struggling with at the time, we are to bring it to our LORD. That is not to say that we “order up” a remedy. That is not ours to pick. We bring our needs to the LORD confident of the LORD’s love for us as well as power and presence in our world. We set it at the feet of our LORD with loving humility. And then we allow God to be God.

And we offer the LORD praise always and everywhere! That is the part that we often miss. That is what the LORD desires from us – loving and heartfelt praise! We do this through our words. We do this through our actions. In doing this as well as bringing our needs to the LORD we affirm our understanding of our relationship with our LORD, the primary and primal relationship. As St. Paul noted in his moving speech to the Athenians in Acts (17:28): “For in Him we live and move and have our being…For we too are His offspring.”

We recognize, honor, and praise our Father Almighty when we lift our hearts and prayers to Him in our need. When we bring those needs to the LORD, we let God be God, we allow the LORD to act, and often what we find is that it isn’t the external or the environment that the LORD acts upon but rather us, through our prayer, we open ourselves to the LORD’s unfathomable and unwavering love which informs us, conforms us, and transforms us.

So let us open ourselves to our LORD, let us bring our needs to the LORD daily, hourly, moment to moment, and let us honor the LORD’s power and presence by letting God be God.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.