There can be a hunger for the profound when we reflect on the Psalms. A desire for the opportunity to demonstrate our wisdom of God’s greatness. (Perhaps that’s just me, wretched as I am.)
I don’t have have much profound to say because in the midst of Psalm 103 I’m simply struck with one simple truth: God is greater.
Higher than the mountains that I face, we sing. In 103, we read about it. This thought is liberating. My mountain is not small or inconsequential or unworthy of prayer and thought. It’s just not that big beside the goodness, greatness, care and faithfulness of my God.
It’s He that works righteousness and justice for the oppressed. He heals. He forgives. He redeems. He satisfies our desires with good things. He renews energy and injects hope.
He doesn’t react to our sin and our weaknesses as one who is altogether holy should react. And he doesn’t react to our circumstances as we do either. He’s blessed with a fullness of our story that we don’t have. There’s no uncertainty on God’s behalf.
When Paul writes that ‘all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ with a resounding ‘Yes’ and, through Christ, our ‘Amen’ ascends to God for His glory (2 Corinthians 1:20) it is with a certainty based not on circumstance, but on Christ alone – the same yesterday, today and forever. After all, hope found in any human creation is a form of planned obsolescence*.
This is the hope and truth declared by David in Psalm 103 and found in Jesus. He is at work. Sometimes on my circumstances, sometimes through my circumstances, sometimes in my circumstances and, in ways that I sometimes find frustrating, His working His kind of good. Not always the same as mine but, I discover, a far better kind of good.
As I follow Him in the fire and in the flood, I see those two kinds of good converge. It’s slow work…cause I’m a slow learner…but it’s good work because in those places, He’s working on me. He’s working on us.
As you go about your week, whatever circumstances you find yourself in, know this: God knows.
He knows the fullness of your story. Better still, He’s writing you in to a much, much bigger story: the story of Jesus. A story in which you will find wholeness, grace, love, forgiveness, healing and utter certainty. Your faith is not misguided when it is put in the hand of One who knows every one of your days and how they can work out for His glory.
While mortals rise and perish, God endures unchanging on. Bless the Lord, oh my soul!
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*From Leading with a Limp by Dan B. Allender