daily java

Daily Java: For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death,
        my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
I believed; therefore I said, "I am greatly afflicted."
And in my dismay I said, "All men are liars."
How can I repay the LORD for all his goodness to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.
I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.
(Psalm 117:8-15)

Stuff happens to you that you hate. Sometimes it happens right in the middle of some good times. They may be times when you are praising God, or feeling close to him, or just feeling good.

In the middle of his psalm of praise, the psalmist says, all men are liars. Kind of an explosion of anger. You have helped me, Lord.  You have kept me from harm, I walked with you, I know my need for you, but all men are liars. 
Things happen. People lie to you and use you and hurt you and do all kinds of evil against you (Matthew 5:11), and you can do nothing about it. Even though God could stop it, he does nothing about it either.

But when it happens, you go right back to praising him. I mean, what else can you do? He is your God and they are jerks. To spend all your time pondering their jerkness would be counterproductive.

Your life of praise and service, small though it may be sometimes, is interrupted by people being jerks. You deal with it as best as you can, and realize that God is still God and is still in control. And you go back to his goodness. You lift up his cup and you call on his name, fulfill your vows where everybody can see you.

And you recognize that, even if worse comes to worse, your death will be precious to him. He will not leave you unavenged.

Romans 12:18-20 says, Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

The person does stuff to hurt  you, you go on praising God. And you know that one day God will deal with him. In fact, not only do you go on praising God, you are nice to the person and treat him with kindness. To do so makes it worse for him in many ways. He is looking for retaliation and you will not give it. If anybody does God will.

When Jesus was dying on the cross, and people had hammered nails into his hands and feet, they had whipped him and treated him worse than anybody ought to be treated, bad or good, in the middle of all this, he forgave them. His comment: they really don’t know what they are doing.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. but keep on praising anyway. It is all that will matter in the long run.