Psalm 44.17-21

All this has happened though we have not forgotten you. We have not violated your covenant. Our hearts have not deserted you. We have not strayed from your path. Yet you have crushed us in the jackal’s desert home. You have covered us with darkness and death. If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread our hands in prayer to foreign gods, God would surely have known it, for he knows the secrets of every heart. [Psalm 44.17-21]

You know who this sounds like? Job.

I wish to be very careful here, but the fact is, the Bible is clear that the people of Israel forsook God over and again, exposing themselves to all manner of curses described in Deuteronomy 28.

It is no stretch of my imagination to think that the author of this particular Psalm, like Job, may have had a temporary lapse of memory about understanding his own heart. Ironically, the author indicates that God knows the secrets of the heart, but seems to indicate that he, like God, understands the secrets of his own heart as if he could declare himself innocent.

If the OYCB is arranged with any kind of accuracy, then the Psalms included in today's reading, including Psalm 44, were contemporary to a time when Israel was back and forth with God, but mostly forth! In other words, Israel spent most of the Old Testament in disobedience to God. Disobedience is the keyword here...

Father, I know my heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. I know even my thoughts here could be entirely amiss. But I also know this: Your Word, like You, is unchanging - Your Word is clear that punishment is the result of sin and serves this purpose: to bring us to repentance and restoration.