Psalm 11:6
conduits of grace
By reason of the misery of the needy, and the groans of the poor, now will I arise, saith the Lord. I will set him in safety; I will deal confidently in his regard. (Psalm 11:6 DR)
As the Psalmist surveys the wickedness of the world around him, his part of the dialogue ends in the previous verse where he places proud boastings on the lips of those who forget and reject God and feel themselves to be above all accountability. Righteousness seems to have no recourse against a generation that rejects the concept outright and deems itself above all such considerations.
It is here that the dialogue shifts and now God speaks through the Psalmist. The cries of the needy and the suffering—in contradistinction to the pride of the wicked—form the raison d'être for God’s action on the behalf of the righteous. Their suffering by the hands of the unrighteous is not in vain but becomes the crucible by which God will save them and bring them to safety. Elsewhere the Psalmist echoes this truth:
He who dwelleth in the aid of the Most High shall abide under the protection of the God of Jacob. He shall say to the Lord: Thou art my protector and my refuge: my God in Him will I trust. (Psalm 90:1-2 DR)
Our Lord also amplifies this truth when he says:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted… Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. (Matthew 5:3, 5, 11-12 DR)
What the Psalmist describes does not occur when everything is fine or when we are living our best lives. The outward manifestations of success or prosperity or blessing can be deceptive, for we are all too eager to associate our lack of suffering or success or whatever we deem good on a worldly level with God’s favor.
The danger, however, is that this mentality can all too quickly transform into a version of the proud in the previous verse who magnify their tongues and ask who is Lord over us? The only difference is that we might give this same pride a more religious veneer or—even worse—spiritualize our pride so that we begin to perceive it as virtuous.
The reason that God will arise and come to our aid in the time of suffering is that it is when we have the opportunity to be most receptive to Him. After all, it’s not as if God suddenly decides to act, as if He changes His mind or thinks “oh, I guess I better do something now.” Rather, it’s that we are brought into a state where we recognize Him and are open to His grace working in our hearts. As the scriptures say:
God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (James 4:6 DR)
Suffering becomes a crucible in which grace can purge the dross of our sins and refine our hearts into vessels into which grace can be poured. Just as precious metals are purified of their impurities by means of extreme heat, so suffering forces a decision between pride and humility. Will we accept from God’s hand both good and evil, or in our pride will we demand what we think we are entitled too, which is simply another way of asking “who is Lord over us?”
This is why one of the most tragic things that can befall us is to waste our suffering, something of which we are all no doubt guilty at some point or another. We strive against it and try to avoid it as best as we can, but on some level or another we will all undergo suffering. The question then becomes whether it will be an occasion of great grace and thus of great good or simply misery that delves deeper into itself.
For the Christian there is a paradox, for while suffering is a result of the Fall, it is also the source of our salvation. This was accomplished in our Lord’s suffering and Passion and death, but is recapitulated in some ways in our own lives as part of Christ’s body, in which we mystically share in and participate in His sufferings. This is why St. Paul says:
[I] now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church. (Colossians 1:24 DR)
He experienced great suffering in his life, and no doubt like any human did not exactly run towards it with glee. However, he also understood that especially in suffering he was most able to identify with his Lord and thus found a special communion that would not be happen otherwise. This is why he could embrace it willingly, because it made him more like unto his Lord which he desired more than to not suffer.
In our own lives suffering will come our way, and while it’s God’s place to bring it to us instead of ours, it is our place to willingly endure it for the sake of our Lord, who embraced suffering for our sake. There is thus a spiritual closeness that is forged in this crucible, a clarity that gets foggy and obscured in prosperity and worldly happiness.
There is actually thus great hope in suffering, for in whatever form it takes it need not be wasted. It is not random bad luck or merely the natural consequences of a fallen and depraved world, but a potential conduit of great grace that we might otherwise never receive.
As the Psalmist declares, the times of need and suffering are when the dialogue shifts and the answer to the pride of man and the haughtiness of the wicked is answered, for God will arise and give grace to the poor and the humble and the needy. The hope in the midst of suffering is thus that we should lift up our eyes to God, for salvation is near at hand.
In this animation I was playing around with a plugin called Shadow Studio 3, which creates ray-traced-like shadows in After Effects. This animation, of course, doesn’t use shadows, but you can use it in an inverted way to create glows as well, which is nice.
I basically experimented with the settings until I got something nice and subtle. Next I added a looping wiggle expression to the source point of the shadow/glow source to have the glow move around.
I then added in a grid of particles using Trapcode Form and applied the same effect from the text so that everything would move in sync.
Pretty simple but I think it’s a nice look.
Enjoy.
By reason of the misery of the needy, and the groans of the poor, now will I arise, saith the Lord. I will set him in safety; I will deal confidently in his regard.
(Psalm 11:6 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: