Liz’s Morning Devotional: Scripture selected from Upper Room
April 5, 2023
Psalm 116:1-7
1 I love the LORD because he hears my requests for mercy. 2 I’ll call out to him as long as I live because he listens closely to me. 3 Death’s ropes bound me; the distress of the grave found me I came face-to-face with trouble and grief. 4 So I called on the LORD’s name: “LORD, please save me!” 5 The LORD is merciful and righteous; our God is compassionate. 6 The LORD protects simple folk; he saves me whenever I am brought down. 7 I tell myself, You can be at peace again because the LORD has been good to you.
Good Morning, O the Lord’s been good to me, and so I thank the Lord.
David says, “I came face-to-face with trouble and grief.” These are words to which we can all relate. Sometimes it seems that trouble and grief seek us and/or follow us. Our God is compassionate, and our God is waiting for our call for help. Amen! If all this that we believe is true, then why do we spend so much time fretting over our troubles and grief?
Do you remember yesterday when we talked about being a disobedient and contrary people? Well, this is a continuation of that discussion. God is here waiting for us to call, but we don’t call. Why? Because we are proud, we want to do it ourselves. Because we are embarrassed, we don’t want to admit our failings. Because we are . . . We could all fill in the blank with our own iniquities.
How do we fix this? Jesus taught us to humble ourselves before God and one another. In verse 6, David says, “The Lord protects simple folk.” This might be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we are thankful for protecting us when we don’t know or don’t understand, but on the other hand, we don’t want to be simple folk; we want to know and understand even that which isn’t ours to know yet.
God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s time is not our time. In humbling ourselves, we turn everything over to God and allow the Holy Spirit to work through us and transform us. When we are ready, the answers that we seek will be revealed to us. In Proverbs 3:5-6 we read, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; don't rely on your own intelligence. Know him in all your paths, and he will keep your ways straight.”
In my time of searching, I found this prayer that helps me. The title asks much from us: Patient Trust. A pair of ideas with which most of us struggle: an oxymoron. Pray with me the Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin (listed By dotMagis Editor)
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Blessed God, We thank you for Your blessings. May we find trust and patience through our transformation. Help us release our worries and humble ourselves to You. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen
Thought for the day: I can trust God even when I don’t have a full understanding.
Seek God! Pastor Liz
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