Why?

Blessed be God, Who has not turned away my prayer nor His lovingkindness from me.  Psalm 66:20  NASB

Has not turned away – As we discovered yesterday, the biblical standard is holiness.  Absolute holiness.  There is no “bell curve” of righteousness.  There is no appeasement policy.  There is no “life” insurance because you once made some sort of confession.  Therefore, we all fail.  God does not hear us.

Except—He does.  The only real question is “Why?”  Before we attempt an answer, we should notice that the phrase “has not turned away” is not conditional, that is to say, it is the strong sense of “not” (lōʾ) followed by the Hiph’il, qatal perfect of sûr (“to turn aside, to depart”).  The verb form is causative.  What this really says is that God, for whatever reason, has caused Himself never to turn away, and since it is a “perfect” form, this causative action has already been accomplished and is finished.  It isn’t going to change!  God is not going to turn away despite the fact that He should.

Why?  Well, that answer is also strictly about God.  He made a promise—to Himself—that He would be the suzerain lord of Israel, and He isn’t going to break that promise even if Israel isn’t worth listening to.  We might never know, even in eternity, precisely why God chose to make this promise, but He did, and the fact that He did means that He has decided to show lovingkindness (really, ḥesed, with all of its implications) to those whom He has chosen.  It’s no wonder that the Psalmist opens this verse with bārûk ʾĕlōhîm.  So should we all.  What else can we do but bless the One who decided to listen to us?

The nature of God’s faithfulness, and the reason He listens, is all wrapped up in the covenant.  Without the covenant, there is no chance of engagement with God.  And, of course, the covenant is with Israel through Abraham.  As the Psalmist said, it is unconditionally finished.  It was finished the moment God walked between the split animals in the time of Abraham.  As far as justice is concerned, this is the only reason God pays any attention to us.  That’s why Heschel can say, “In prayer we seek not to make God visible but to make ourselves visible to God.”[1] If we’re going to live, in this world and the next, we need God’s attention.  As Buechner remarks:

“You can survive on your own.  You can grow strong on your own.  You can even prevail on your own.  But you cannot become human on your own.”[2]

“ . . . praying too is a slow, grave journey—a search to find the truth of our own lives at their deepest and dearest, a search to understand, to hear and be heard.”[3]

“Ultimately religion is not based on our awareness of God but on God’s interest in us.”[4]

Topical Index:  covenant, prayer, sûr, depart, Psalm 66:20

[1] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. xxii.

[2] Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (HarperOne, 1992), p. 13.

[3] Frederick Buechner  Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperOne, 2006), p. 60.

[4] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. xxii.