Devotional 8-3-07

Psalm 107:1-9, 42-43 The Message

Oh, thank GOD-he's so good! His love never runs out.
All of you set free by GOD, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.

Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to GOD.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank GOD for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.

Good people see this and are glad;
bad people are speechless, stopped in their tracks.
If you are really wise, you'll think this over-
it's time you appreciated God's deep love.

How many times have we heard the phrase, "God is good"? How many times have we stopped to think about just how good God is? Certainly those who were delivered from bondage in Egypt, as the passage above refers to, knew how good God was. Without God's goodness and grace, there would have been no escape. There would have been no thirst-quenching streams in the desert and no manna to satisfy their hunger. They would have had no chance of making the trip to the land that God promised them. God was so good that He got them out just in the nick of time! How good was that? God is good! All the time!

Life can be hard sometimes. Wow, is that an understatement. Money problems get us down. Strained relationships make us hard to live with. We suffer from broken hearts and lost jobs. Aches and pains start to follow us around as we get older, and sometimes very serious illness catches us by surprise too soon in life. There are so many desert crossings to make, and we seemingly find ourselves out in the scorching sun all by ourselves. But, we know better than that if we are wise.

How big is the problem you are faced with right now? How hot is the sand on your feet? How parched is your throat? Are you to the point of staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion? Call out to God! God will get you out in the nick of time! Easier said than done? Not to those who know God's love. If you have never felt God's unending love, do the wise thing, and think it over. God is rounding you up. Remember, it's not how long you have known God's love. The idea is to know it, and believe before it's too late.

God is good! Go tell the world!

Mace Sturm