Words of comfort, words of hope, help for the anguish of today

By Dean Collins

There are days that it simply seems too hard to consider that this is the day the Lord has made and we should rejoice in it. I suspect the day a bomb drops on your house in Ukraine doesn't feel like a day the Lord made for rejoicing. The day your child did not come home from school because she was killed by an 18-year-old gunman isn’t a day that shows how praising the Lord is possible.

Anguish . . . and comfort

Yet, these often-quoted words are from God, recorded in Psalm 118. We do not know with certainty who wrote the psalm. Some say it was a king. Some say it is a collection of praise from a variety of contributors. Some suggest it was an ordinary person recounting the deliverance the Lord brought to his desperate situation. It is definitely easier to declare these words of thanksgiving and praise after a deliverance than in the middle of a disaster or catastrophic loss. In the middle of the storm, our prayers, if we can find them, are short and desperate: “How long Oh Lord,” “Lord have mercy,” “Jesus.” These are genuine cries from us in our moments of anguish.

Lines from Psalm 118 have brought comfort, hope, and direction for centuries. They’ve been prayed by Jewish worshippers as well as those who follow Jesus. These verses call for thanksgiving and praise because of God’s character as well as his deliverance. Each verse is relatable on some days, but on others we struggle to believe them in the middle of great suffering or overwhelming odds about how our situation can possibly resolve.

But we take hope when we watch or hear some dear soul declare these truths after we have watched them walk through what we simply cannot imagine enduring. We see friends and strangers declaring praise and hope as they claw through their suffering with deep sorrow and grief. Everyone gets to the other side of great suffering eventually. It might be achieved only in the next life, but the slow recovery of another in this life stirs hope in us that we might endure as well.

We need to know how we get to the next day and declare that this is the day the Lord has made and that we can rejoice. We need examples of those who walk through the shadow of death and still find quiet waters and renewed faith. We need to declare these truths even on days that we struggle to believe them.

Refuge in the Lord

“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man,” the psalmist declared. “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” These two verses are critical to our survival. Yes, ordinary friends and family can help. Yes, powerful and wealthy people can offer assistance. But no one can do what only God can do. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and always present. He is the only one fully able to deliver and worthy of our full confidence. With faith in him, we must reach to Heaven and toward each other to do what we can on dark and discouraging days.

Rejected stones

Verse 22 records these familiar words: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention Jesus quoting this verse. Soon after Pentecost Peter was arrested and was brought before the Sanhedrin and asked about what power and in what name he was preaching and performing miracles. Peter declared that Jesus was the stone that was rejected and who is the cornerstone of all salvation.

Rejected stones are tossed aside. Rejected ideas are not considered. Lives lost in tragedy appear to be rejected. Some literally think so little of another’s life that they end it. But in the eyes of God and surrendered to the hands of God, nothing and no one’s life is unusable. God has an eternity of examples of what was thought to be weak and useless but is miraculously transformed into something beautiful.

Some days it is hard to consider the truth of Scripture, but even on those days, the power of God is at work taking rejected people and transforming their lives into powerful testimony. And sometimes it happens even after death.

Hope from God

Hear the word of the Lord and have hope. The Lord is on our side. The Lord is our helper. No man can take this truth from us. The Lord is our strength and our song. He is our salvation. We will not die but will live. This is the day the Lord made, and we can rejoice in it. So go ahead and declare prayers of thanksgiving and praise even as we pray with the psalmist of old: “Save us, we pray, Oh Lord!”

Your time with God’s Word
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭118:1,5-18, 20-29‬ ‭ESV

Photo by Kelly Sikkema at unsplash.com

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