Lenten Relection: Thankful for the Psalms

These days of Lent for me have been filled with the overwhelming thoughts of  Japan and it's people  . Our brothers and sisters across the world reeling in such deep despair and pain that to me there isn't a word to be found that would come close to describing it's intensity. Before the days of CNN and internet we heard of such horrific events and we could only imagine ....but now we see the faces and we hear the voices and the words .We see beyond the faces and the voices and the words. WE see the hopelessness ,the crushed hearts and spirits, and we FEEL.  I'm grateful I feel .I'm thankful I cry out to God for those I do not know and will nevr meet . For if I didn't it would mean I am a dead woman walking. It would mean a heart of stone . I thank God for compassion as it leads to action even something as small as a bow of the head , a loving thought or a five dollar donation. But an action doesn't free me from feeling helpless . No matter the things I might do to do my part the feeling of helplessness will remain. But there's a place I can go where others have gone gone before me and have recorded feelings and times of great trial and tribulation ,where one has felt forsaken, crushed ,afraid to the point of death,betrayed ,rejected . I go to the Psalms and here I find words to describe what I cannot describe , phrases in which I can feel the groaning and pleading ,the confusion ,bewilderment ,hopelessness,fear ,anger,lonliness.Lashing out,crying out,silence of not being able to form any words. And all these things are directed at God. And no,lightning does not come down to strike them . There's a safeness in getting real with the Lord.  And as one comes to the end of a Psalm there is always the acknowledgement that refuge and rescue can only come from God ,that we can take shelter under His wings, the One who will sustain us,the Only one who can deliver us from the enemy ,whatever the enemy may be. So I am thankful I can go to the Psalms and find the words of despair that I cannot find myself and pray that my fellow man ,woman and child in Japan and elsewhere will somehow even in a moment find refuge and the gentleness of wings .