Trust. Unfailing. Love.

My journey through the Old Testament took me through Genesis 27 – 33, Psalms 27 – 33, and Judges 3 – 9.   As I read this morning, it was a section of Psalm 33 that struck a chord in me … specifically, verses 1 – 5 …

“Let the godly sing for joy to the Lord; it is fitting for the pure to praise him.  Praise the Lord with melodies on the lyre; make music for him on the ten-stringed harp.  Sing a new song of praise to him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.  For the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything he does.  He loves whatever is just and good; the unfailing love of the Lord fills the earth.”

What I found interesting about this is the emphasis David puts on being joyful … he says our hearts should be longing to sing for joy to God, to praise him with our voices.  Essentially, what he’s saying is that our general demeanor should be reverent gratefulness to God, so much so that our joy in Him should show and should fill us at all times.

The thing is, I confess I don’t always walk around singing praises to God at all times.  I think I’d bug people after a while, particularly the way I sing.  Clearly I’m praying that God gives me a new voice once I get to heaven, because the one I have now sometimes couldn’t carry a tune if I had a bucket to put it in.

Anyhow … the beauty of David expressing his heart in this Psalm is that he (as he usually does) shares with us the reason we should have this yearning to worship God in our innermost being, and in the process he shares some important attributes about God that naturally should create a reaction of this type.

He says, “for the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything He does.”  WE CAN TRUST EVERYTHING HE DOES.  Think about this for a moment.

Let’s get real honest … day-to-day, when challenging things happen, when disappointments come up … do we trust God in those things?  Do we question Him?  Do we wonder if He’s paying attention?   Do we accuse Him of sleeping on the job?

Several years ago, some friends of ours went through the unspeakable struggle of their five year-old daughter getting diagnosed with a rare cancer in her heart.   After a three-year battle of epic proportions and the understandable emotional toll, the little girl died … at eight years old.  The torment of that tragedy rocked the core of so many of us in their sphere and throughout the entire community … and their family never recovered.  Like the majority of couples who lose a child tragically like this, their marriage couldn’t handle the pain and divorce resulted.

I was asked to speak at the memorial and did.  I struggled to think about how I could possibly offer any degree of explanation about the situation.  The truth is, I couldn’t.  There is no explanation over something like this, humanly-speaking.  And I’m not saying that God should be called upon to explain Himself over something like this.  Unfortunately, death resulted from the fall in the garden of Eden and this is one unfortunate, unfathomable result.

But what we can rely on is what this Psalm expresses … “the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything He does.”  Why can we trust everything He does?  Because, “the unfailing love of the Lord fills the earth.”   Everything God does is in love.  God cannot do anything that is not from the abundance of His love.  His very nature IS love … hence He can’t do anything to violate that will.

Does that mean the fact that our friends daughter died at just more than eight years old is a good and loving thing?  Well of course not.  But somewhere in the event of heartbreak, God was at work … and His word promises that He works all things together for the good of those who are the called according to His purpose.  In all that happens, we have the immense blessing of being able to trust God and take Him at His word.  His word says He cares for us.  His word says He loves us.  His word says that everything that happens is intended to bless us.  No, I can’t say how this all equates, I just know it does.  God is actively at work all the time, bringing the entirety of His creation along to the intended state He had in mind when He created it.  So, he’s got His most favored part of His creation at heart (humankind), as well as the rest of the entire universe and everything in it.

This doesn’t mean we can always see HOW it comes together.  It means we can trust and rely on Him THAT it will come together … somehow interwoven into the billions of people on the earth and all else that has His fingerprint on it.  His love FILLS THE EARTH.  He loves each and every one of us enough to express it openly, consistently, visually, fervently, equally.

Whatever we’ve been through or are going through … no matter how terrible things feel or seem …  God is always, actively at work with us in mind.  Even in what seems like tragedy … but to me, the REAL tragedy is that there are people in our world who think it’s all purposeless, random, haphazard and by chance.  This is above all the most empty, pessimistic, hopeless of philosophies.  Instead, we can take heart and bask in the peace God offers us from knowing He’s at the helm … even when we don’t understand what He’s up to.  We can trust everything He does.  Because the unfailing love of the Lord fills the earth.

Let those last two sentences hold you upright this week, no matter what you’re going through.  Offer them to others who need it this week as well.

Trusting Jesus with you, because of His unfailing love!

MR