KAPH
81 My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word.
82 My eyes long for your promise; I ask, “When will you comfort me?”
83 For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes.
84 How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me?
85 The insolent have dug pitfalls for me; they do not live according to your law.
86 All your commandments are sure; they persecute me with falsehood; help me!
87 They have almost made an end of me on earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts.
88 In your steadfast love give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth.
Psalms 119:81-88
When it comes to our salvation, we are most likely talking about our full and complete reconciliation.
Once, we were hopelessly separated from God and doomed to oblivion. I say ‘oblivion’ instead of mere death because I imagine we were doomed to death beyond death; I mean, death beyond the expiration of our physical bodies – our bodies won’t just expire, but the memory of us would be forgotten. Oblivion implies we aren’t just dying, but we would totally cease to exist.
When I talk about reconciliation, this means that we were not merely given a line or a connection back to God, but we were brought closer to Him – so close, in fact, that by the Spirit we not only can face Him and call Him our God, but we could RUN to Him, calling Him our ‘Abba, Father’.
Once, we were not only separated from God, but sin entered into this world, and we were doomed as slaves to sin and the flesh (‘flesh’ implying the will apart from the will of God).
When I talk about reconciliation, we’re talking about how Christ not only took our sin but BECAME our sin, so in His death we were freed from any obligation to it. Through Christ’s death we have been liberated from the bondage of sin and the flesh, no longer seeing it as appealing as we once thought, no longer wishing to partake in it as we were once programmed to.
When I talk about reconciliation, we’re talking about how Christ rose from the dead, therefore confirming that all death was dealt with, and guaranteeing that we have been rebuilt, remade, recreated – from slaves to sin to righteous children of God, forever in right standing with Him that, again, we are able to run to Him, calling Him our Lord, and also calling our Lord, our Father.
We give praise and thanks to our God, for such a complete, comprehensive and absolute reconciliation – though there was much discussed here already, I’m sure it’ll take us a lot more time to truly savor in the sweetness of this salvation!
But we need to address something else. I am not denying that, while we are in this fallen, wretched world, we will find ourselves willingly making mistakes, or unconsciously stumbling into blunders based on our limited knowledge and senses. We continue to be in the mercy of those who assume themselves as more powerful than us, and are the cause of some unfortunate incidents and events in our lives – actively in the present, or as a result of their own ill-intentioned and/or limited knowledge and senses.
From all this, I suppose one option we have is to continue to call on our Savior to save us, to long for salvation from these things, in this reality. To this, the Psalmist reminds himself, and us – that we hope in His Word.
In other words, in times when we need salvation, one thing for us to consider is to remember how we have been given Christ – both the Living Word in whom we hope, AND our Salvation of Salvations.
He who has saved us from the tragedy of tragedies, and the death of deaths, will surely hear us when we cry out and respond according to His infinite power and eternal wisdom. At the very least, we are given a peace beyond distress, beyond anxiety and fear, beyond any discomfort – knowing that no matter what happens, we have already been saved – a timeless salvation, an absolute reconciliation was given to us, and is actually always with us, in the form of Christ in us, and us in Him.
The God of comfort is faithful to us – by way of this peace that goes beyond being a mere state of mind, but a mainstay in our entire being – holding us together while the rest of the world ruins itself in chaos. We may be exposed to the corruption of the world, and we may be made victims to those who have yet to see and receive the salvation we have, but we will stay steadfast, returning to the joy of our Salvation, always finding our refuge in Christ…
…that when we are saved from the temporal, we give glory to the eternal Savior.
What a mighty God we serve.
Angels bow before Him.
Heaven and earth adore Him.
What a mighty God we serve.
Hasn’t He saved us from so much, this 2024? So much we can remember, but also so much that we forget. He’s saved us from so much that we don’t realize. We couldn’t help but to give Him thanks – it’s the natural next step, or the natural course to take for anyone who trusts in Him.
The Psalmist says that the Life He gives precedes the testimonies in our mouth – and I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that order, and in that choice of words. Christ’s salvation precedes our peace, and it’s this peace that comes before any event and circumstance in our own lives in this reality, whether they be fortunate or unfortunate in our eyes.
The song says we have strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow – but, see, Christ has also guaranteed full and complete peace for our past.
It’s this peace that helps me with my tragedies, no matter how big they are, or how deep they run. The absolute peace we have in Christ reminds me that the pain ends, eventually.
It’s also a peace that eventually brings me to hope – hope for full and complete relief and comfort.
We’ve realized all this as we went through this very… colorful year, and I am thankful.
Hitting 400000 words soon to end this year. But let me just take a quick break before I get back to it.
Until that next post, God bless us all.
399415/365000
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
Leave a comment