In just a few verses, the songwriter of Psalm 116 has climbed from the utter depths of grief and sorrow to the heights of praising God. His journey undoubtedly took many months, however. The song merely recounts his ordeal.
While his praising God marks the pinnacle of his climb, it also appears to be his means of getting there. He didn’t wait until he felt better before giving the Lord praise.
Read MorePsalm 116, a lament of grief and sorrow, takes a positive turn with the composer deciding how he will respond to the Lord’s deliverance (116:12). He promised to tell the story of God’s rescue; now he determines to take his public announcement to the next level.
Read MoreWhat does “I shall lift up the cup of salvation” mean? In the Old Testament the word “cup” is frequently used to denote plenty and abundance. You may remember that in Psalm 23:5 David claims that his “cup overflows.” The term “salvation” actually appears in the Hebrew Bible in the plural—salvations. We would grasp the meaning better if we’d render it “deliverances.” The psalmist is expressing praise to God for His abundant and numerous deliverances. So, literally, he says . . .
Read MorePsalm 116 is the lament of a man surrounded by grief and sorrow, most likely because death has touched his life. Let’s take a few moments to probe a little deeper into a song of sadness.
The first line of the psalmist’s song is surprising. He writes, “I love the LORD, because . . . ” (116:1). In the nineteenth century, a young English girl, Elizabeth Barrett, suffered a spinal injury at age . . .
Read MoreIt was a phone call I’ll never forget. It was from a young woman whose life lay shipwrecked on the California beach from where she was calling. She had a terminal disease, leukaemia. Her husband had left her. Her child had recently died at only two and a half months old. Her friend had just […]
Read MoreOf all the letters Paul wrote, Second Corinthians is the most autobiographical. In it the great apostle lifts the veil on his private life and allows us to catch a glimpse of his human frailties and needs. You need to read that entire letter in one sitting to capture the moving emotion that surged through […]
Read MoreAre you in physical pain today? Someone reading this is in pain. Perhaps it’s you. Or maybe you know someone in pain. Pain rarely makes sense and often continues without relief. Throughout the ages, others who have endured pain have turned their attention from the temporary pain to things eternal by meditating on passages of […]
Read MoreI’ll never forget a lunch I had with a Christian businessman. As we discussed many of the responsibilities connected with his vocation, the subject of wisdom kept sliding into our conversation. He and I were agreeing on the value of certain qualities that cannot be learned in school—things like intuition, diligence, integrity, perception, consistency, loyalty […]
Read MoreSome of you are facing what could easily be called an unsolvable problem. It’s you I hope to encourage today. Often the situations with no human answers form the basis upon which God does some of His best work. This is illustrated beautifully in the life of Job, who, in my opinion, is a living […]
Read MoreQuestion: Last month, I thought I was having a heart attack. My pulse was racing, my palms were sweating, and I started breathing heavily, as if I were going to pass out. I went to the hospital, and they said my heart was fine—what I had experienced was a panic attack. Now I have anxiety […]
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