Emotional Meditation—By Micah Siemens
Some faith is learned before it is chosen. Psalm 44 opens not with personal testimony, but with memory—handed down, repeated, rehearsed until it becomes part of the soul’s vocabulary.
“O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us…”
This is faith inherited. Stories passed across generations like family heirlooms. Not abstract theology, but lived history—victories God won when His people had no strength of their own. And there’s something deeply pastoral about that. Because not every believer begins with a dramatic encounter. Some of us begin by listening. By absorbing truth before we fully understand it. By trusting the voices that shaped us long before we found our own. Perhaps you know what it’s like to lean on stories before you’ve lived enough of your own. To hold onto Scripture, tradition, testimony—not as crutches, but as anchors. Psalm 44 honors that kind of faith without shame. The psalm remembers a God who acts.
“You with Your own hand drove out the nations, but them You planted.”
God is not passive in these memories. He moves. He uproots. He establishes. And the psalmist is careful to say what didn’t win those victories:
“Not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them…”
This is humility woven into history. A refusal to mythologize human strength. A reminder that faith has always been about dependence. There’s a quiet corrective here for anyone tempted to trust their gifting, intellect, or calling more than God’s presence. My own journey reflects that awareness. I care deeply about craft, language, theology—but I have also learned that none of it matters if God isn’t in it. Psalm 44 affirms that instinct: God alone is the source of true victory. Then comes the heart of this opening section:
“In God we boast all day long, and praise Your name forever.”
This isn’t arrogance. It’s allegiance. Boasting in God means refusing to build your identity on what you can accomplish. It means locating your worth somewhere steadier than success or failure. It means saying, “If there is anything good in us, it began with Him.” Psalm 44:1–8 is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s grounding. It’s orientation. It’s the community reminding itself who God has been—not because they’re naïve, but because they’re about to walk into hard questions. And that’s often how faith works. Before the storm of confusion, before the ache of unanswered prayer, before the long night of wondering why—we return to memory. We remember. We rehearse. We anchor ourselves to the God who has acted before. Not because the past solves the present—but because it gives us courage to speak honestly about what comes next.
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