Hope for the weary

Life in this fallen world is wearisome. Sometimes your marriage is just exhausting as you work to make a sinner married to a sinner coexist in love and peace. Sometimes it’s just plain tiring to be a parent, particularly on those days when it seems that your children have conspired together to be corporately rebellious. Sometimes you don’t feel like being nice to that neighbor who seems to be able to look at every­thing and find a reason to complain. Sometimes you just get exhausted with dealing with your heart—you know, those desires you shouldn’t have and those thoughts you shouldn’t think. Sometimes you have to drag yourself to your church service or your small group. Sometimes you’d just like to get off the Christianity treadmill and zone out, but you can’t. You wake up the next day and you have to do it all over again—another temptation, another marital misunderstanding, another conflict with another friend, another resistant child, or another moment when you feel the emotional temperature change.

When you’re weary and feeling weak, run to the Psalms; there’s grace to be found there:

„I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.“

(Psalm 121)

This psalm confronts you and me with two truths that we must always remem­ber. First, we are not in this battle alone. We have a Keeper, and our safety is His com­mitment. Second, the One who is our Keeper never, ever takes a break. His keeping care is 24/7 forever and ever. The inexhaustible Keeper is your help and strength, when weary, run to him.

P.D.T.