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 for now the joy we experience is despite sorrow and the heart is glad even
when it aches.
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