Why must we care for orphans, Part Two

If my heart was revealed in that moment, one of the places God reveals His is Psalm 22:24, where He states “For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and He has not hidden His face from him, but has heard, when he cried to Him.”

 David himself was so struck by this revelation that he prefaces it in verse 23 that all Israel should stand in awe and glorify God, a God who is like this.  You see, David was accustomed to the gods of the nations being a lot like the rest of us.  They liked the strong things.  The impressive things.  

But how great is the God revealed here in Psalm 22 who aligns Himself not only with the broken but the brokenness of the broken, or as He puts it here, the affliction of the afflicted (this idea is so important, we will address this specifically in another post!).  It is this declaration (among many in Scripture) that reveals God’s peculiar passion and protection of those who are afflicted.

The passage itself breaks into several sections, each displaying yet a new facet of the concern of God.  It begins with the strong declaration that He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.  While the two words are nearly synonymous, and certainly used together add emphasis to the statement, however, they do have slightly different intentions.  

To despise often has the sense of extreme disdain while abhor carries more typically visceral repulsion. There can be no question that the words chosen here as negative descriptions of God’s character were selected because most commonly they are the actual emotional reaction and responses to both affliction and the afflicted.  The use of the past tense in this verse actually strengthens the declaration, because it is proved to be a consistent display of God’s character in the past.  

As I’ve already mentioned, we’ll address the next phrase of the verse, ‘the affliction of the afflicted’ in another post, but just let us note here that neither the affliction with which a person is afflicted, nor their condition or state of being afflicted comes under God’s disapproval or loathing.  To add force to this, the next phrase, ‘and he has not hidden His face from him’ signifies both God’s pledge of personal attentiveness to those who are weak and broken, and His willingness to act on their behalf.  For to have God’s face upon him is to have His pleasure and His presence.  This He confirms positively in the final phrase “but has heard when He cried to Him”.  Here for the first time in our verse does God speak in the affirmative.  He hears when they cry.

It was less than four weeks following my collision with that young woman that I was in a special needs classroom where I had taken a summer job as an Assistant, and within that first week I shared with my Pastor that I thought  I now knew what God made me for.  The last twenty-five years have proved the accuracy of that early sensing of God’s purposes in my life.  They have also proved the very real privilege  of caring for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities!