I will rejoice and be glad in Your faithful love
because You have seen my affliction.
You have known the troubles of my life
and have not handed me over to the enemy.
You have set my feet in a spacious place.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
my eye is wasted from grief;
my soul and my body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my iniquity,
and my bones waste away.
This is a miracle we often overlook, I’m afraid. This is beyond me.
To know the evil, hidden thoughts and motives of a person, their iniquity, and still to love and deliver them.
To know the troubles a person faces and the afflictions they endure and still to love them and deliver them.
It is difficult for me to have such a perspective even toward my own children. God knows all that troubles us and all of the trouble we cause for ourselves and yet, through His faithful love, He sets us in a spacious place. He removes us from our troubles and our afflictions graciously. He loves us and delivers us in an eternal sense, a sense that we cannot fully understand and internalize. We live in light of the promise that one day He will return and make all things right.
There is still a depth to the love that is described in this psalm that I cannot understand and am still learning to accept. Hearing and understanding that the Creator of the universe loves us and makes provision for us in spite of our evil motives and troubled lives bings a sort of hopeful confusion. The hope springs from the deep joy of knowing that we are loved in spite of ourselves. The confusion comes from trying to understand how or why He does it. Some truths are simply beyond our comprehension; yet, critical to our survival.
Psalms 31:24
Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!
Thanks be to God!
Ventanas 