At one point I spoke with a spiritual mentor, who challenged me with wise counsel. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but it was something like: “Ben, this is a challenge for you. Maybe instead of wishing for a more impressive trial, you should handle this one as biblically as possible.” That advice was incredibly helpful. God wants me to come to Him in humility and ask for help, regardless of how small the trial is. And He has shown me in the Psalms that He can handle any problem I send His way. If He can help people on the extremes, He is more than able to help my small problems. 

I used to find the Psalms discouraging. Not because the Psalms themselves were depressing, in fact, quite the opposite! The Psalms are filled with accounts of people who faced unbelievable challenges, and through patient faith in God found themselves vindicated against those who stood against them. In the Psalms we read accounts of people at the lowest point of their lives looking to God in faith and finding Him to be more than sufficient. It’s impossible to read these accounts and not come away excited and triumphant in the power of God to overcome the greatest obstacles we can imagine.

The problem is that the issues I face are far less dramatic. Can I honestly take the extreme examples of the Psalms and apply them to the stress I feel when I get behind on house chores, or fear that the budget is getting a little bit tight at the end of the month? We probably wouldn’t say it out loud, but it feels a little bit lame to go to the Creator of the universe and ask for help with homework, using the words of David when he was literally running for his life. So I used to read the Psalms and be discouraged, because it didn’t really speak to my situation. Or so I thought.

But I’ve had a change of mind recently. God has helped reorient my thinking on the Psalms. It’s true that I don’t face the same dramatic circumstances that are often depicted in these ancient poems, although one day I might. Nevertheless, the point of the Psalms is that the same God who could help David in the most extreme circumstances has the grace and the power to help me in the smallest of problems. God doesn’t want us to walk away from Scripture because we don’t think it applies to us. Satan does. 

I can remember at one point struggling with a trial that I thought was small and insignificant. I tried ignoring it, avoiding it, telling myself it shouldn’t really be that big a deal, and not really dealing with it.

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