The tears are hot in your throat even now. I can feel it. You have been wronged, and the wrong has bitten deep, and you have cried out from the place where the iron enters the soul. You have asked God to act, to judge, to arrest, to bring down what is proud and hurtful. That prayer did not fall on the floor of heaven; it was heard. But let me come alongside you for a moment, not to hush your cry, but to steady it with a word your own heart will recognise when it grows quiet.
Your prayer is like a man who has been robbed crying out for the constable. There is nothing strange in it. The sense of injustice is one of the screams of a spirit made in God’s own image, it cannot bear cruelty and falsehood. But you know, I think, what it is to stand at a door and knock and knock, and then, when the door is actually swinging open, to keep on knocking, because the tears in your eyes keep you from seeing that the hinges have already moved. Your Lord heard you the first moment. The justice you beg for is in hands far safer than your own.
Think of a ship in a gale, labouring in deep water. The passengers cry out that the wind must stop, and stop now. But the wind has a Master, and the Master holds the helm. He may not silence the storm the instant you demand; He may ride out the night watch with you, bringing the wind round point by point, until you see that the very gale you cursed has blown you into harbour. God’s judgment is not a bailiff who falls asleep. His timetable is not the same as ours, but His memory is perfect, and His arm is not shortened.
And yet, and here I must be faithful to you, when the heart is boiling over with a sense of injury, the sweetest relief is not always found in begging God to smite the wrongdoer, but in taking your own hurt and laying it upon the altar where the Lamb was slain for you. I do not ask you to pretend the wrong is not real. It is real, and it stings. But your own peace is too precious to be pawned to get even. There is a way of committing a cause into God’s hands that leaves your own spirit as free as a bird let out of a cage. The bird does not ask to fly back and sink its beak into the hand that held it; it sings and is away into heaven’s own air.
Have you ever opened a letter whose envelope was edged with black, expecting only heavy news, and found inside a love-note from a friend? Sometimes our worst cries come wrapped in mourning, but inside there is a secret word of love that we would never have learned if we had not been driven to our knees. This very sharpness may be the strange tool by which your Father teaches you that He is enough, even when the other person is not punished yet, even when the scales of this world seem tilted.
Do not quiet your prayer, but let it breathe a larger air. You have asked for the person to be arrested and sacked; now leave the name in the hands of the Judge of all. If the man is a Joseph’s brother, only let God make him a penitent. If he is a Saul, only let God do what seems good to Him. But as for you, my heart’s desire is that your own spirit not be poisoned by the bitterness that eats the vessel it is stored in. You have been kept under a harsh custody, the custody of a wounded soul. Already the door is opening. Step out into the light of “My God will I cry by day, and He shall hear.”
I commend you, dear trembling soul, into the pierced hands that govern all things. Lord Jesus, our righteous Advocate, take this dear one’s cause out of their own grasp and place it in the hollow of Your hand. Give them the peace that comes not when the enemy falls, but when the heart is hidden in the cleft of the rock. Let them hear Your voice behind them, saying, “I will repay.” Even so, come and calm what is wild, and give sleep to these tired eyes, for Your name’s sake. Amen.