Pastor's Note - July 14 
It is a terribly frustrating thing to have a complaint that no one will hear. If you are a sports fan, you’ve experienced this, particularly in relation to referees. You watch as your team gets obviously mistreated by the officials, either with undeserved calls against your team or obviously deserved non-calls against the other team. As you yell at the screen you know the officials will not hear your complaint. They won’t even hear the complaint of the team on the field/court/ice. In all my years of watching sports, I’ve never seen a referee change his mind on a call because a team complained about it. So you are stuck with the call, left only with a complaint, and no recourse. No one will hear your plea. It is an incredibly frustrating experience, marked by a severe helplessness. It is an awful thing not to be heard. I was reflecting on that as I listed to Russ’ wonderfully encouraging sermon on Sunday. Very often it feels that there is no one to hear our plea, and respond to our complaint. I was encouraged on Sunday by this thought that undergirds all of the Psalms: we have a God who hears our pleas. He hears our complaints. We do not have to feel helpless, screaming into the void. We do not have to feel like the helpless sports fan yelling at the officials onscreen, knowing they will never hear or respond to our valid complaints. Rather, we have a God in heaven who has heard all of our complaints, reasonable or otherwise. He is a hearing God. And He answers. The incarnation and the cross tell us that God hears, and has an answer to all our problems. And one day, every complaint and plea will be fully answered in glory, when we meet our Savior face to face.