Whose intervention?

Can I accept the place of the weak and be the alien and the fatherless, rejecting the temptation to act in wickedness creating my own salvation? When things go bad the temptation to intervene and ‘make them better’ can become immeasurable. Yet the Lord councils me not to put my trust in people, and ‘people’ has to include myself. My hope is the Lord himself. I see people suffering; can I trust Him to fulfil Ps 146:7

‘He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.’

Normally I would intervene but in a current situation the Lord has challenged me to be silent, and this silence frustrates me. I know that the Lord draws out faith through such times, yet the furnace is becoming unbearable.

I believe the Lord wishes me to see my own helplessness and learn to depend on Him alone, both for myself and for those I see in need. I see oppression and hunger and want to have pity and make it better. I fail to see that the Lord may be doing a work in the lives of the oppressed as well. If I were to act it would kill His process. So, my intervention would be wickedness. This stanza finishes,

‘The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.’ (Ps 146:9).

Can I accept the place of the weak, rejecting the temptation to create my own salvation?

Time will tell.