Somewhere in the Psalms a Man Hands God the Fatherless on Purpose

The anger showed up when he was about twenty four, which is late, and it has no face on it, which is the problem.

He could not pick the man out of a room. He has seen one photograph, taken before he was born, and it is not a good one. So when the thing rises, and it does rise, there is nowhere for it to land.

He has tried arguing with him in the car. It does not work, because he has to write both sides of the conversation, and the other man's lines always come out too reasonable or too much like a cartoon.

So it stays in. And staying in has a cost, and the cost is being paid by people who had nothing to do with it. His girlfriend gets the edge of it. The guy at the counter gets the edge of it. A driver who did nothing wrong got a whole afternoon of it last week.

That is the part that is starting to worry him. Not the anger itself. Where it is going instead.

Somebody hands it over on purpose

There is a psalm that spends most of its length furious about people who get away with things, and then it does something specific.

Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14, King James Version)

Read the two halves.

Look at the verb in the middle of it. Commit is a deliberate act. It is what a man does with something he is handing across.

Then: thou art the helper of the fatherless. He does not say God is sympathetic about it. He says God takes the file.

And notice the first four words. Thou hast seen it. Before anything is handed over, the psalm establishes that it was witnessed.

You are not carrying something nobody saw. Psalm 10 puts the seeing before the handing over, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a line about being witnessed do something to a weight a man has been holding alone.

God says whose job this is

Here is a sentence people usually hear as a warning. Read it as an assignment instead.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

Vengeance is mine.

That is not God saying nobody should be held to account. That is God saying the accounting belongs to a department, and that you do not work in it.

Which is worth thinking about, because part of what makes an anger with no face on it so heavy is that a man is unconsciously carrying it as though the settling were his to do. It is not, and he was never issued the tools.

You have been taken off a job you were never qualified for. Romans 12 assigns the accounting somewhere specific, and it is His Spirit who makes handing over a file feel different from letting somebody off.

A whole book of the Bible is one long argument

If handing it over sounds like it means going quiet, look at Habakkuk.

O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! (Habakkuk 1:2)

That is verse two. That is how the book opens.

He argues for two chapters. He does not soften it. He tells God the arrangement looks wrong from where he is standing, and God answers him, and he argues again.

Nobody edited that out. It sits in the Bible as an example of how this is done rather than as a warning about how it should not be.

You are allowed to say it at full volume. Habakkuk 1 keeps the complaint in the opening lines and never apologizes for it, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old argument feel like permission for a man in a car.

The word for what you do with the weight

There is an instruction in Peter that has a specific verb in it, and the verb is the whole thing.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

Casting is not setting down gently. It is throwing. It is what a man does with something he wants out of his hands and away from him.

And the reason given is not that the care does not matter. It is that He cares for you. The weight goes across because of who is on the other end, not because it was never heavy.

You have somewhere to throw it that is not into the people around you. 1 Peter 5 uses a throwing word rather than a suppressing one, and it is His Spirit who makes an old instruction do something about where the edge of it lands.

And the psalm says where, and when

Psalm 62 says the same thing and adds the timing, which is the part most people are never told.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8)

Pour out your heart. Not summarize it. Not tidy it first.

And at all times, which rules out waiting until it has cooled into something presentable.

That is a very different instruction from the one most men were raised with, which is to handle it and bring the finished version.

You are invited with the thing in the state it is actually in. Psalm 62 says pour out and says at all times, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a man believe he does not have to arrive already sorted.