Verse 21½

I want to share one of the most extraordinary verses you will never read in the Bible. Psalm 22:21½. Psalm 22 begins in agony: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1) For 21 verses David cries out from darkness. He feels abandoned, mocked and surrounded. Then verse 21: "Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen." Despair. But suddenly, verse 22: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you." (Psalm 22:22). Praise. Something has happened. Somewhere between verses 21 and 22, everything changes. I call that space verse 21½. It is unwritten. Unseen. But perhaps that is precisely the point. Sometimes God does His greatest work in the space where there are no words. Paul says when "we do not know what we ought to pray for," the Spirit Himself intercedes through "wordless groans." (Romans 8:26) Perhaps you are living in verse 21 right now. You cannot see the answer. You don't know what to pray. And verse 22 feels impossibly far away. But don't mistake God's silence for God's absence. There is a space between your despair and your praise. And God works in the space between. Without even realising it, you may be living through your own unwritten verse 21½. (Craig B). Open Bible – bit.ly/Psa22v21, bit.ly/psal22, bit.ly/Psa22v1, bit.ly/Psa22v22, bit.ly/rom8v26