One difficult theological conundrum in the Christian life is failure. After all, if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) Yet, the Bible is full of failures. Despite overwhelming grace, the Israelites are carried into exile. Despite direct, face-to-face encounters with Jesus, disciples turn astray and fail. And sometimes, in the Christian walk, we are faced with failure. We get a strong sense that we believe is from God that we should go forward with something. We go forward, and it fails miserably. We are hurt, and we wonder if God set us up or if we weren't really hearing God's voice. Either way, our faith is rattled. The same is going for Asaph, who is wondering why armies are invading and succeeding in Israel. This could be the exile, it could be one of many other situations where armies actually begin to succeed in the wars against ancient Israel. Yet, God is God, who can defeat God?
Failure is a mystery that is often beyond our comprehension. We can set up theological framework to explain away failure, but our best explanations can still feel dry. Much like the explanations of Job's "friends" were of little use to Job, we can often sit in judgment on others and even ourselves when faced with the anxious, fear-inducing reality of failure. I wonder if we instead brought failure to God, like Asaph does, and in doing so remind us of the ultimate reality that God is Most High over all the earth. And in that reality, I can have some measure of peace today, despite my failures.
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