It is good to give thanks to the LORD And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning And Your faithfulness by night. Psalms 92:1-2
Pastor Charles Swindoll once said, “Life is so daily!” Yes, it most certainly is so! The daily-ness of life brings many trials and heartaches and grief. We try to anticipate what may come tomorrow — after all, we should be prepared — and with the anticipation of Hurricane Dorian a couple of weeks ago, we Floridians prepared for a deadly storm! In fact, it did not take very long for the store shelves to be emptied of water and canned food…gas stations were running out of gas and generators were far and few between. People were scared and anxieties ran very high! However, after all of that hurried prep, Hurricane Dorian only grazed Florida, but not without the devastating and deadly impact on the Bahamas. Weathering a hurricane and its aftermath is a huge trial. I’m sure that the Bahamian people would agree for it blew in death and destruction and blew out leaving those islands with grief and pain.
Even though hurricanes are horrible events to survive…or not, what of the “hurricanes” that blow destruction on a daily basis. My best friend will bury her 95-year old mother on Sunday. The ill wind that blew into her life on September twelfth and left her to close the book on her Momma’s life, has left her grieved. We will go and honor her, but the pain won’t stop for my friend because we laid her Momma’s body to rest. No, but I am certain that she will awake each morning and find His mercies are new and His love is steadfast.
Moses prayed to God (while wandering for 40 years):
O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, And the years we have seen evil. Psalms 90:14-15
Moses understood grief and despair and affliction, but with that understanding, he understood the stability of God. Each morning that he arose, each morning that he breathed anew, he learned of God’s steadfast love and sustaining mercies. He saw again and again how each day God provided the Hebrew children’s hunger with manna…He wasn’t ignorant of such mercy.
We are shown throughout Scripture of His holy mercies toward us. Jeremiah in Lamentations said, after seeing the destruction of the temple and the people dead:
Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers And is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” Lamentations 3:19-24 [Emphasis mine.]
In God’s steadfast love and his ceaseless mercies, I want to incline my heart to Him…I want to echo Jeremiah and say, “The LORD is my portion.” He is all I need and He is enough. Even when I am not steadfast and loyal, I am not consumed.
“For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
(Malachi 3:6)
As I continually turn my heart toward Him, I will not be consumed by those things which threaten my sanity and my life. When the night is long and the battle is difficult, I will not be consumed. His steadfast love and endless mercies sustain me and they are new each morning. He has a storehouse of love and a storehouse of mercy and out of that storehouse, each morning He showers us with the grace of new mercy. I am thankful for His storehouse with no bottom and His abounding mercy toward me…I am not consumed.
I stretch out my hands to You; My soul longs for You, as a parched land. Selah. Answer me quickly, O LORD, my spirit fails; Do not hide Your face from me, Or I will become like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; For I trust in You; Teach me the way in which I should walk; For to You I lift up my soul.
(Psalms 143:6-8)
Azalea Trees and Tea Rooms 