Seen, Heard, Known

 I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. In my alarm I said, "I am cut off from your sight!" Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Psalm 31: 7,21-22. (I encourage you to read the Psalm in its entirety)

There is reason for rejoicing even amid afflictions; that reason is the love of God. In and from his love we are seen in our afflictions, known in our anguish, and heard in our cries. He is neither detached nor unmoved or removed from our heaviest sorrows. He is not passive; his love is evidenced by action and in presence. He is a refuge (v1,2,4), fortress (v2), and deliverer (1,5), offering salvation, freedom, and deliverance to a spacious place (v8).

This talk of "spacious place" has come up again and again. How constricting, confining, and claustrophobic the anguish of soul can be with walls of affliction and sorrow towering over us at dizzying heights blocking the light of the sun! He reaches in and sets us in a spacious place where we can see beyond the walls of our grief and sorrow. Notice he does not always remove the affliction, but often moves us, giving us a new perspective. Sorrow and grief will remain until we are brought into that final most spacious place where the only walls found are built with jewels of joy, mercy, grace, unfailing love, hope, goodness, righteousness, and faithfulness radiantly glimmering in the light of the Son. 

Until that day many of us cry with assurance we are heard. 

Be merciful to me O God, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish, and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weary. Verses 9-10

This psalmist knew full well the emotional, spiritual, and physical toil of grief and great sorrow.  

I am a dread to my friends-those who see me on the streets flee from me. I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. 

Many who are deeply hurting will testify to all the above. Relational strain as a result of deep grief is real. Isolation in sorrow and suffering is both real and perceived. This happens in our biological families, our friendships, and our church families. Where do those in deep grief or anguish of soul often say is one of the most conflictingly tough places to be? Church. This is multifactorial and the case with both many new and "old" believers. (This is not to say there are not caring and compassionate people praying for and pressing into those with deep wounds within our churches.) 

Ask someone who has endured or is walking great sorrow if they've ever sat in a pew surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ blanketed in loneliness. Ask them if they've left more discouraged than when they walked in the doors. As them if conversations or sermons have left them feeling the realities of suffering are easiest and most comfortable for the masses when avoided. Ask them if they've ever felt overlooked, as though the eyes of the church look over them fixated on the people beyond, not within, the pews. Ask the hurting believer in your pews if they know the good news of the gospel applies to them and matters to the church as much as the next mission, outreach, or building program. 

But only ask if you're really willing to hear the answer and don't mind being uncomfortable. If we hear their answers and choose to remain unmoved, removed, or detached then we've only added another heavy rock to their dizzying and confining wall of sorrow. 

Dear griever and anguished one, the psalmist reminds us though we may be or feel unseen, rejected, avoided, or forgotten in our anguish by mankind it is not so with the Lord. 

For we have cried out to you. How great is your goodness which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men, on those who take refuge in you. Be strong and take heart all you who hope in the Lord. Verses 17, 19, 24

He is faithful to refuge, strengthen, rescue, fortify, save, and to guide. We can be assured we are seen, heard, and known by him in our anguishing afflictions, sorrows, and grief. 

I trust in you O Lord. I say you are my God. My times are in your hands. Verse 14.