God of the Oppressed

by Katie Jackson

"How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? 
Is the enemy to revile your name forever?
Why do you hold back your hand;
why do you keep your hand in your bosom? 
Yet God my King is from old,
working salvation in the earth."

PSALM 74:10-12

What does it mean to worship the God of the oppressed?

I believe God is grieved by our suffering...that God loves us in an up-close, fully present kind of way. So when we suffer, God is with us--with compassion and sharing in our anguish.

The Psalmist is no stranger to lament. Crying out at injustice and fear that the enemy is winning. Where is God? Why isn't God doing something more to ease our suffering? Through prayer and looking into the faces of our neighbors, and listening for the still, small voice we can come to see; God is right here with us working for the reconciliation and salvation of all things.

Jesus prayed the Psalms, this we know from scripture, so in this season of Lent, one that draws us to reflection and reckoning, we need not be afraid of voicing our own anguish, our own lament, our own uncertainty. God hears these prayers, prays them with us, and can hold us through these big feelings.  

But most of all, God is with us. God does not abandon us to our suffering.  God has the oppressed--the poor, the orphaned, the hungry, the imprisoned, the lonely, the stranger, the sick, all those who suffer--at the forefront of God's mind in working for justice. But God, too, seeks to redeem the oppressors; to oppress others is its own kind of enslavement--enslavement to the chains of death. God's justice is slow because it seeks to include everyone; no one is meant to be left out. God pursues the wellbeing of everyone. 

We can be impatient and afraid and sad; we can (and should!) bemoan injustice. But we can also trust that God is faithful to us. Our suffering is not a sign of God's abandonment. No. God draws near to us and is working salvation in all the earth. Let us be signs of God's presence to one another.