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The Forward Day by Day Meditation for February 20, 2021

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SATURDAY, February 20 [Frederick Douglass]

Psalm 30:8 Then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear.

Have you ever felt distant from God, as if your prayers bounced off the ceiling and landed at your feet? I have waited decades for a healing miracle in my family. I have prayed and wept. I’ve begged to be repaid “for the years that the swarming locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25). Yet the painful situation persists.

I sometimes wonder: Where is God? Where is my miracle? And then I think of John Donne’s poem, “Hymn to Christ.”

Yet through that mask I know those eyes,

Which, though they turn away sometimes,

they never will despise.

I remember God’s love for me. Like a good parent who must sometimes turn away, who must sometimes say “no” or “wait,” God still loves me and my family. Though I do not know how God is working, the realization that God is working helps calm my fear.

MOVING FORWARD: Are you in a period of swarming locusts? Read and pray through all of Psalm 30 today.

PRAY for the Diocese of the Arctic (Canada)

Ps 30, 32 * 42, 43 | Deuteronomy 7:17-26 | Titus 3:1-15 | John 1:43-51