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Psalm 115
“Not unto us” is a prayer we may readily associate with a moment of gratitude. Something good has happened, a difficult undertaking has been completed, or a prayer has been answered, and we want to acknowledge the One whose goodness made it possible. We recognize that the glory belongs to God. But Psalm 115 places those familiar words beside a question that makes us pause: “Where is their God?” The opening prayer is spoken in a world where God’s presence is being challenged, where the people who trust Him are being asked to account for a God others cannot see.
That gives the prayer a weight we might miss if we stop after the first verse. These people want God’s name to be honored because of His mercy and truth. They are appealing to what He has revealed about Himself while others question whether He is there at all. The psalm does not tell us every circumstance behind that challenge, but it allows us to hear the tension. They belong to God, and yet their circumstances have given others occasion to ask where He is (Psalm 115:1–3).
As I have considered this psalm, I have found myself thinking about a question people still ask: If God is loving, why does He allow this to happen? Sometimes the question comes during a conversation about faith. Sometimes it follows a diagnosis, a sudden loss, or another account of suffering that seems impossible to comprehend. The words may sound similar, but we should be careful about assuming they come from the same place. Someone may be challenging what we believe. Someone else may be trying desperately to understand how the God she loves could allow something that hurts this much.
I do not think we honor God by treating every painful question as an accusation against Him. Nor do we help a suffering person by answering a question about her loss as though she had merely raised an interesting theological problem. There are things Scripture helps us understand about suffering, sin, and the brokenness of this world. But knowing those truths does not mean I can explain why this particular sorrow has entered this particular life. I need enough humility to recognize the difference.
Perhaps that is where the question becomes most difficult. We believe God is able to intervene, and we know that sometimes He does. When the healing does not come or the loss cannot be undone, we are left holding what we know of His love alongside something we cannot understand. Psalm 115 does not explain every such circumstance. But it asks us to consider the One to whom we bring our questions. What grounds do we have for trusting Him when His purposes remain beyond our sight?
The contrast that follows helps us consider that question. The idols are fashioned from silver and gold. They have recognizable features, and someone can point to the place where they stand. Yet their eyes cannot see, their ears cannot hear, and their hands cannot act. Their worshippers can approach them, speak to them, and place offerings before them, but nothing in those carefully formed faces can respond. The living God’s purposes may be hidden from His people; these idols lack even the capacity to know that anyone is calling (Psalm 115:4–8).
The worshippers can see their gods. Their gods cannot see them.
It is an unsettling reversal, especially when we consider how often we want something visible to settle our uncertainty. We may never fashion an image from silver or gold, but we can become quite certain about what God’s faithfulness ought to look like. We imagine the answer that would reassure us, the change that would demonstrate His care, or the timing that would make His purposes easier to trust. When those things do not appear, we may begin to question His character through the narrow opening of our expectations.
There is a humbling distinction between knowing what God has promised and deciding how He must fulfill it. Scripture gives us real knowledge of Him. He has spoken, acted, made promises, and revealed His character through His dealings with His people. We are invited to attend carefully to that revelation. Yet we are not given an explanation for every circumstance we will encounter, and we can easily add expectations He has never asked us to carry. We may be waiting for Him to keep a promise while quietly requiring Him to do so in a way He has not promised.
Into that uncertainty, Psalm 115 calls God’s people to trust Him as their help and protection. Then comes an assurance that feels especially tender after the description of those unseeing eyes: “The LORD has been mindful of us.” The God who cannot be reduced to something His people can display has remembered them. They remain within His faithful regard (Psalm 115:9–13).
We must be careful with that word remembered, because our own remembering so often follows forgetting. A name returns to us. An appointment comes suddenly to mind. We recall someone we have neglected and realize how much time has passed. God’s remembrance does not suggest that His people briefly disappeared from His knowledge. In Scripture, His remembering is bound to His faithfulness. When Exodus tells us that God heard Israel’s groaning and remembered His covenant, it describes His attention to the suffering of His people and His faithfulness to the promises He had made. Their years of bondage had not erased them from His care (Exodus 2:23–25).
That does not make waiting painless. It does not tell us when relief will come or allow us to explain every sorrow as preparation for something we will soon understand. We should be slow to offer explanations God has not given. A person carrying grief may need our presence far more than our theory about what God is accomplishing. We can acknowledge that something hurts, confess that we do not understand it, and still hold to what He has made known.
For Christians, that knowledge has its fullest expression in Jesus Christ. We return to the One Scripture reveals, whose life, death, and resurrection give us grounds for trusting God’s love beyond the circumstances of a particular day. Paul directs our attention to Christ’s death for sinners as the demonstration of that love. When our experience becomes difficult to interpret, we have somewhere firmer to turn than our ability to find a reassuring pattern within it (Romans 5:8).
I find something deeply comforting in the way Psalm 115 holds God’s glory and His care for His people together. The opening prayer gives the honor to His name, and later the blessing reaches both small and great. His greatness has not made the small unworthy of His attention. The people praising Him are remembered by Him. Their confidence rests in the mercy and faithfulness for which they ask Him to be glorified.
Perhaps that is a prayer we can learn to offer while the answer remains beyond our sight. We can ask God to act, bring Him the questions we cannot settle, and return to Scripture to remember who He has shown Himself to be. We may not yet understand what His hand is doing. We can still trust the character of the One whose hand it is.
The God who sees His people has not forgotten them.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.