Psalm 119:147 (ESV) … “I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.”
How true that is to life. We have been in the same place ourselves, worrying, fearful, desperate. Sleep is driven from our eyes; we anticipate the morning. Bed becomes an instrument of torture and we get up because we can no longer toss and turn. This is the third time the psalmist has mentioned his crying, the third time in three verses. There can be no doubt he is in trouble.
“I hoped in Thy word,” he said. That is the worst part of it. Even God’s Word seemed to have failed. Verses like this, which sound so much like our own experience, drive us back to Job. There were times when Job lost hope. But even then, in his darkest hours, when the heavens seemed as brass and his pain and anguish more than he could bear, even then God was watching over him. Job did not know why these disasters had overtaken him. He knew nothing about the secret counsels of the most high, of that insolent challenge flung in God’s face by the father of lies. He did not even know if his sorrows would ever end. His own wife had already actually suggested suicide as an answer. “I hoped in Thy word,” Job might have said. The silence of God was the greatest trial of all. But if God was silent, He certainly was not absent. Not a single stroke fell on Job that God had not measured first.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.[1]
[1] Phillips, J. (2012). Exploring Psalms 89–150: An Expository Commentary (Vol. 2, Ps 119:147). Kregel Publications; WORDsearch Corp.
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