It's Not About Me

Israel's poet surveys the destruction of Zion, the City of God and pours out his lament, his anxiety, isolation, depression and despair. 

I am like a pelican of the wilderness;

I am like an owl of the desert.

I lie awake, 

And am like a sparrow alone on the house (102:6,7).

But then the poet looks past Zion's scattered "stones and dust" and his own distress to the day when God will "arise and have mercy on Zion" (102:13). He writes "for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created (born) may praise the Lord" (102:18). 

He writes of a day 600 years later when God acted in Christ on the cross and brought salvation to the world (102:19-28). [Psalm 102:25-27 is quoted in Hebrews 1:10-12 and applied directly to Jesus. They record the Father’s words to the Son as he contemplates the cross.]

The poet turns from his own distress and prays that the day of salvation will come, just as we pray for that Great and final Day of the Lord when He will come again and "the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).

And so, I see, it's not about me; it's about God and what He is doing. I must look beyond my transient distress to God's eternal plan, when “the people shall gather together and the kingdoms, to worship the LORD" (102:22). 

Thy kingdom come, O Lord; Thy will be done.

David Roper