When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn. Wherever I go, my enemies have set traps for me. I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me. Psalm 142:3–4 (NLT)
Have you ever questioned, “Does Anybody Care?” It’s likely everyone at one point or another has felt abandoned and wondered if anyone cared about them. You may have felt that everyone was against you and perhaps like King David, you found yourself hiding in a cave and on the run from everyone and everything.
Psalm 142 is a Psalm of David, and is one of 59 Psalms of lament, a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. This Psalm reflected a time when David was fleeing from King Saul and hiding in a cave. In this Psalm David pours out his complaints before God, voicing his sense of being overwhelmed.
His enemies have set traps for him, and he is desperately looking for someone to come and help him and he concludes that nobody cares about him or what happens to him. There are seven verses in this Psalm and David spends the first four verses pouring out his guts to God, pleading for mercy.
There is always a place where we can go to God with all of our troubles, our problems, even our fears and our doubts. He knows what we are thinking and what we are feeling anyway and there is no point in trying to put on a religious façade that is neither honest nor accurate in portraying where we are really living our life.
Are You in a Hole?
David is not the only one who wondered if anybody cared about him. Joseph’s brothers dropped him in a hole and sold him into slavery, and he was sent to Egypt. He served faithfully in his master’s home until Potiphar’s wife accused Joseph of sexually assaulting her.
Once again Joseph found himself in a hole in the ground as a prisoner. He might have thought to himself, “What did I do to deserve this kind of treatment?” He thought, “I love God, and I have tried my best to serve faithfully and yet, once again, I end up in a hole in the ground. Does God really care about me?”
Before too long, Joseph’s brothers found themselves in the midst of a famine and they made their way to Egypt in hopes of finding food for their families. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph was now in charge and after a series of events and several trips back and forth between Canaan and Egypt, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers.
Joseph invited the entire family to come and live with him in Egypt, and he provided land and provisions for them. Jacob also came and lived out his remaining years in Egypt. God had a plan all along, but it was not always obvious to Joseph.
Bring Me Out of Prison
Clarity comes in the last verse of Psalm 142. “Bring me out of prison so I can thank you. The godly will crowd around me, for you are good to me.” David once again remembered God’s goodness. When it is dark and you are in a cave or a hole, it can be easy to forget how good God is because all we can think about is our circumstances and how miserable we are at the moment. But if we can remember the goodness of God, it will change everything.
The key for us is our confidence and trust in God. We will only know the depth and strength of our faith when it is tested. Testing demonstrates the extent to which we are relying upon the goodness of God. It is easy to declare that we have strong faith when things are good and quite another thing to stand firm when our world is crumbling around us. The hymn writer put it this way, “When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.”
The Goodness of God
Are we convinced that God is good? God is always constant and faithful; however, we must live our lives in the light of His goodness and then we will be steadfast and unmovable. Two Scriptures come to mind. The first is Romans 8:38–39; “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor ne anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The second is 2 Timothy 1:12, “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” We must be convinced that the only option is to live our lives convinced of the goodness of God.
Perhaps you find yourself hiding in the cave or you even feel as though the entire world is against you. God can use those circumstances to show you that he is present and concerned about things that happened to you. Like David, you may find yourselves at times wondering if anybody or even God cares about you. However, if you keep your eyes open and you have a receptive heart, God will reveal his goodness to you.
God Cares About You
Don’t despair, you will find out that not only does he care about you, he loves you and he has a plan for you to bring you out of the pit or out of the cave and then you will recognize that he was with you all of the time, even when you could not feel him or see him because he is the God who never leaves us or abandons us. He is a God of goodness and mercy, and we can trust him with our lives. Remember, somebody cares about you! Amen!
Steve Ekeroth