On Earth as it is in Heaven

How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all humanity! Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave? Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked, how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations, the taunts with which your enemies, Lord, have mocked, with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one. Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:46-52)   Psalm 89 is a lovely, soaring Psalm.  Beautiful things are said of who God is: a God of righteousness, faithfulness, and loving kindness who has created the world, subdued all chaos, and made a covenant with his people. The Psalm spends long verses explaining the faithfulness of the Lord.  It spends long verses describing the covenant made with King David and his descendants: how even if those sons of David were unfaithful to the Old Testament law—that is, the covenant made at Saini—how God would be faithful to his new covenant, made with David, even still.  God's faithfulness is everlasting.  Eternal.  Nothing can break it.  And God—who does not lie, the psalmist points out—made this promise to David, unconditionally, to ensure that David's line would continue forever. But then God broke his promise.  Or at least, it sure did seem that way to the psalmist writing this song.  A dramatic turn comes quite suddenly upon us as the psalmist presents us with the devastation and abandonment experienced by God's people.  The psalmist demands to know: how long will this continue, Lord?  Your promise to David is everlasting—so will this devastation end before the end of time?  If you're faithful—it should, and soon—we human people don't live forever!  The Psalmist further demands to know: where is this going to happen?  Where is your former great love to be displayed?  Because it certainly was not evident to the psalmist in any space he could see. We Christian people hold on to a Christian hope of a future of life with Christ.  But when our present life and situation on earth does not look like we hope it to in heaven, these questions are pertinent.  It's great we have a future hope—but that doesn't mean that we can't ask God if he will not show his love in our time and in our space.  We can pray alongside the psalmist in asking: "will your kingdom not come on earth as it is in heaven so that we might see it and live in it in our times and spaces, O Lord?" "How is it that we can say such bold things to God though?" you might wonder.  Because it is God's own faithfulness that's on the line, that's how.  And, because it is ultimately a question about God and not about us, well: perhaps this is exactly why Jesus came to bear out the final lines of this psalm as his own—to allow the mockery of the nations, the wrath of God, and the abandonment felt by God's people to fall on him instead.  Only in the ministry of Jesus, therefore—in his death and resurrection—do we finally find an answer to this psalm.  But we don't live that answer of Jesus' resurrection life in fullness yet, do we?  It remains only a future hope.  And so in each new generation, including ours, we find that we too have to take up our cross, along with the words of this psalm, and journey together with Jesus toward our own death as we wait for God's faithfulness to be proved once again in our own time and space. Maybe that isn't a happy end or neat resolution to this devotion.  But it is where the psalm ends and indeed where Book III of the Psalter ends: by placing our petition before God—demanding that his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, soon—and waiting for his response.  "Amen and amen."