False gods promise pleasure or power or peace but only manage to multiply sorrows even if for a while we think ourselves satisfied. It is the nature of the gods we design, even the ones propped up by Biblical texts and dressed up in doctrinal straitjackets. But the God come down apart from whom we have no good thing was not like that and if our boundaries are to fall in pleasant places then following the way of Jesus is the only path of life that will do. It means we trust with all our heart the very things Psalm 16 proclaims. We will not be abandoned or forsaken. We will know fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. But this isn't some pie-in-the-sky promise that only comes true at the end of the fairy tale No, the promise begins and ends with the statement of faith. You are my Lord and apart from you I have no good thing. That means even when the path of life twists and turns and makes its way through valleys of despair and deserts of heartache we hold on to hope. Sorrows are not multiplied when one has the Lord at hand. Sorrows are endured. They are overcome. And one day they will be no more. But in the here and now we trust in the Lord and cling to the future promise so that we can experience joy despite sorrow and our heart can be glad even when it aches.
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