Psalm 27:8-9 - You have said, "Seek My face." My heart says to You, "Your face, LORD, do I seek." Hide not Your face from me. Turn not Your servant away in anger, O You who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation!

So often we are the ones trying to hide. We try to cover up our shame and guilt and want to hide our sins from others and even from God. After sinning against God, Adam and Eve tried to hide from Him among the trees of the garden, as if a few trees could shield them from their all-knowing and all-seeing Creator! Our attempts at concealing our sins from God are just as foolish as the failed effort of our first parents. In our psalm, though, the psalmist is not trying to hide. He is afraid that God is hiding from him. The psalmist does not want to be cast off, to be tossed aside. He does not want to be forsaken by God.

We know the feeling. When we are in distress and living through difficult days, when we are frightened in the face of illness or death or oppressed by guilt and shame, we may think that God has forsaken us. Does He hear our prayers? Has He tossed us aside in anger and disgust over our sins? God has not turned away. In fact, He has said, "Seek My face." He tells us that He wants to be found. We join in the psalmist's desperate prayer: "Your face, LORD, do I seek." "I am looking for You," we pray, "Where are You, Lord?" The psalmist gives us a clue: "O You who have been my help." When God does not seem to be present, we look back and remember His help and presence in the past. We turn to the cross, to that day when God did hide His face.

Jesus was cast off. He was betrayed and unjustly condemned to death. Although He had prayed in Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass from Him, it did not. As He hung dying on the cross, our Savior cried out in words from a psalm, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Psalm 22:1a, Mark 15:34b). For the sake of our salvation, the Heavenly Father turned His face away from His beloved Son, abandoning Him to the suffering of the cross. Jesus drained the cup of God's wrath against sin so that we would never have to drink from it. He was forsaken so that we will never be forsaken by God.

In times of joy or in days of distress, when we seek the face of God, we will find Him in remembering, in turning to the cross and the empty tomb. In Jesus we have the assurance that God has not cast us aside. God has said, "Seek My face," and He is waiting to be found because, in Christ, He first sought and found us.

WE PRAY: God and Savior, when I seek Your face in prayer, please hear and answer me. Amen.

This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler.

Reflection Questions:

1. Why does trying to hide our wrongdoings from God never work?

2. How was Jesus forsaken on the cross by the Heavenly Father? Why was that necessary?

3. Is there comfort in knowing that God wants us to seek Him, to come running after Him?

Today's Bible Readings: Job 20-21    Matthew 11

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