Week 4 of Lent – Trusting God in the Middle of the Story

Scripture

“Rest in God alone, my soul,
for my hope comes from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I will not be shaken.
My salvation and glory depend on God,
my strong rock. My refuge is in God.

Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts before him.
God is our refuge.”

Psalm 62:5-8 CSB

Reflection

By the fourth week of Lent, many of us find ourselves in the uncomfortable middle. We all know the feeling of being in the middle. The middle of something implies incompleteness, not fully grown, or mature. I call the years I’m in right now the “middle parenting years.” My children are no longer little but not all of them have flown the nest. 

As we wait for Easter, the cross still feels far off. We are no longer at the beginning, yet we are not at the end. The prayers we have been praying may still feel unanswered. The longings we brought into Lent may remain unresolved. This is the space Psalm 62 speaks into. We are all living in some type of in-between, where waiting stretches on.

David does not write this psalm from a place of resolution. You and I don’t live in a place where all things are resolved. In fact, a lot of our past hurts and heartaches go unresolved. In the places where healing happens, we often don’t get the justice or answer we want. 

Even with all of this, David writes from a place of rest. Notice the language he uses: rest, wait, trust. These are not words of arrival; they are words of endurance. David is preaching to his own soul, reminding himself where steadiness is found when everything else feels unstable. 

“Rest in God alone, my soul.” This kind of rest is not passive or dismissive of pain. It is not pretending that everything is fine. It is a deliberate loosening of our grip—the release of our need to control outcomes, timelines, or explanations. Rest, here, is choosing to stop bracing ourselves against what we cannot fix and instead leaning into who God is.

What makes this rest possible is not the resolution of circumstances but the character of God. David anchors his hope in something unchanging: “He alone is my rock and my salvation.” Rocks do not hurry. They do not shift with every storm. A refuge does not require clarity before offering shelter. God’s steadiness does not depend on our understanding.

This is an important word for the middle of the story. We often believe rest will come after answers arrive: after the diagnosis, after the decision, after the relationship heals, after the prayer is finally answered. But Psalm 62 invites us to rest before resolution, to trust God not because the story is finished, but because God is faithful within it.

David also gives us permission to bring everything with us into that rest. “Pour out your hearts before him.” Trust is not silence. It is an honest prayer. It is naming fear, grief, frustration, and longing in the presence of a God who is not threatened by our questions. Rest does not mean withholding our pain; it means placing it somewhere safe.

Lent reminds us that God is at work even when the ending is not yet visible. The cross will come before the resurrection. Waiting will come before clarity. But in the middle of the story, God does not step back. He remains our refuge: steady, near, and unshaken.

This week, we are invited to stop striving for closure and instead practice trust. To rest—not because everything makes sense, but because God remains faithful. To loosen our grip on outcomes and place our hope again in the One who does not move.

Prayer

God, you see the places in my life that feel unresolved and uncertain. You know the questions I carry and the waiting that feels heavy. Teach my soul to rest in You—not because everything is fixed, but because You are faithful. Help me loosen my grip on outcomes and trust You in the middle of the story. Receive my honest prayers, my fears, and my hopes. Be my refuge when I feel unsteady, and remind me that You are near, even here.
Amen.

Reflection Questions

Where in your life are you waiting for resolution before allowing yourself to rest or trust God?

What would it look like this week to loosen your grip and intentionally place your unanswered questions in God’s care?

This reflection is part of the Psalms for the Lenten Journey series—a seven-week walk through Lent using the prayers and honesty of the Psalms. If you’d like to read the full series, you can begin at Week 1 and move through each week at your own pace.

Click here to read the other posts in this series.