July 21, 2026

“Why go I mourning?”

Psalm 42:9

Lord,

In the midst of this period of waiting — for answers, for deliverance from despair, for unknown sources of needed income — in the midst of confusion and hurt, it’s so easy to wonder where You are. The enemy wants me to question Your goodness. He knows my weaknesses. And sometimes I fall for it, and it never goes well.

The enemy wants me to believe:

—  that the night will never end in day;

—  that the sea of difficulties will ebb until there is nothing left but poverty;

—  that the winter of grief, uncertainty and despair, with all its frost, snow, ice and hail, will never give way to spring.

But creation itself tells a different story.

—  Night always gives way to morning.

—  The tide that ebbs always returns.

—  Spring and summer are always faithful to follow even the longest of winters.

Why, then, do I so quickly trust my feelings over what I know to be true?

I’m so often like a forgetful child.

Like David, I have to preach to my own soul. To remind myself that You, O Lord, have not stopped loving me simply because I cannot presently see Your hand. You love me in the midst of all my troubles. You command Your lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night Your song will be with me.

So I ask myself with David, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God; I shall yet praise Him.”

He alone is the help of my countenance. He alone lifts my mood. He is a “shield about me, and the glory, and the lifter of my head” (Psalm 3:3).

One day I will stand in His presence. I will climb, as Spurgeon pictures it, Jacob’s ladder with the angels and behold my covenant God. Surrounded by the splendors of eternity, the trials of this life will either be forgotten or remembered only as a means by which God displayed His faithfulness and worked for my eternal good.

Do you find yourself in a waiting season? Waiting for answers, carrying confusion, walking through some difficult trial? Come and sing with me in the middle of it. Let's make the wilderness blossom like the rose and cause the desert to ring with songs of hope so that others, hearing our song, may be reminded where true hope is found.

These afflictions will not have the final word.

Soon they will be over, and we will be “forever with the Lord.”