Live Like I’m Loved!

This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Ps 118:24

I absolutely love how beloved and well-known verses of encouragement like this come right in the middle of passages that talk about oppression, persecution, illness, and suffering of all kinds. Psalm 118 begins and ends with the goodness and lovingkindness of God surrounding a center of suffering.

So often I begin with my suffering and complaints. Then they take the middle portion as well. At the end, I try to close with praise, but I find it difficult because all I have done is pour out my complaints and sufferings. But my sufferings are not the reality. The reality is the goodness and love of God! The sufferings are just a temporary condition. God’s “lovingkindness is everlasting” (Ps 118:1, 2, 3, and 29)! How can my difficulties even hold a candle to that?

I’m reading the book The Fitting Room by Kelly Minter for a group Bible study I’m participating in. One of this week’s chapters talks about truly believing in and viewing our lives in light of the love of God. Not some ooey-gooey, ushy-gushy temporal perspective of love, but the Ps 118 form of love – eternal, powerful, solid. The kind that makes us stand up and rejoice in the day no matter what it brings, simply because God made it and He loves us!

Even just thinking about the challenge this brings to my heart makes me smile without restraint. God loves me! I am challenged to live like it! To realize that this day was created by a heart of incomprehensible love! To realize that I am the object of that love! How can I help but rejoice in this day?