A Tumble of Promises

“But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord; I say, You are my God. My times are in Your hand...Oh how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence...Oh, love the Lord, all you His saints! For the Lord preserves the faithful....be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” Psalm 31:14, 19, 23

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!  Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints!  There is no want to those who fear Him…those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing…The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry…the righteous cry out and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.  Ps 34:8-10, 15, 17, 19

These promises just tumble over one another in a heap of kindnesses from our Loving Lord.  We are surrounded on every side with promises too good to be true and yet they are our firm reality.  We think we see what appears to be so, but we’ve not the slightest reality what comes next in God’s stories of our lives and others. 

In a story about a man wishing to have the wind change and being offered the keys to the wind, then realizing he may really mess something up by changing the wind, there is this:

“He reached His hand to take the key; and as I laid it down, I saw that it rested against the sacred wound-print.

It hurt me indeed that I could ever have murmured against anything wrought by Him who bare such sacred tokens of His love.  Then He took the key and hung it on His girdle.

“Dost THOU keep the key of the winds?” I asked.

“I do, my child,” He answered graciously.

And lo, I looked again and there hung all the keys of all my life.  He saw my look of amazement, and askd, “Didst thou not know, my child, that my kingdom ruleth over all?”

“Over all, my Lord!” I answered; “then it is not safe for me to murmur at anything?”  Then did He lay His hand upon me tenderly.  “My child,” He said, “thy only safety is, in everything, to love and trust and praise.” 

--Mark Guy Pearse

Once in our family wanderings we drove up the switchbacks of a high mountain.  Fog obscured the roadsides beyond our vision and we knew not what we could not see.  Time and the sun did its work, as time and the Risen Son do also, and in the evening when we drove back down the mountain, in front and along side us was the overwhelming and magnificent face of the mountain, towering over us in the golden glory of the evening glow in such awe-inspiring power that we felt as ants.  But the mountain had been there the whole time in its consuming glory-- immoveable rock.  The fog was just our passing sight.  Just so, our Rock and Fortress is there; whether our fogs obscure or not is immaterial to our reality of life in Him.