When Anxiety Storms In (Psalm 77)

Experiencing anxiety and doubt are part of what it means to be human. The Psalms invite us to be honest to God about what we think and feel. Hiding behind showered bodies, shaved faces, and spiritual facades can be a barrier for God to enter and act, and closes the door to meaningful relationships with one another, inhibiting transformative change.

As followers of Christ, a particularly distressing element of anxiety is reconciling our belief that there is a God, a loving Father, and the reality of not seeing God remove the dangers that threaten us. This is the writer’s dilemma in Psalm 77. Where are you God? If you are the great I AM, why aren’t you now? And these questions can lead us to question God’s very existence. What if God isn't?

God is not threatened by these questions. Instead, these questions are the very place where God enters into relationship with us. Relationship inherently implies the trust and giving of one’s self to another. Even in our most intimate human relationships we can never know for certain the heart and mind of the one we love but we abandon ourselves to the other, to trust they will be there. It is no different with God. We determine to let go of the cliff’s edge of certainty on which we hang, not into a black abyss of nothingness but into the unseen arms of the One who says, “I am here to catch you and carry you home”.