3 Words of Hope When in the Depths
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When I was eight years old, my family and I went to a lake for an afternoon of summer enjoyment. I had yet to learn how to swim, so I decided to see how far out I could wade into the water safely. I walked out to where the water came up to my waist, then my abdomen, then my shoulders.
Yet this doesn’t mean that we are abandoned. Like a night watchman waiting for the dawn, we simply lack the capacity to see all that God is working for us.
Thus, Psalm 130 presents us with the call of hope, “Hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy.” Just as forgiveness is fundamental to God’s nature and identity, so is mercy.
The Hebrew word for mercy is chesed. Chesed describes God’s willful love expressed in God coming to us to meet our needs. God stoops down and enters the frailty and messiness of our lives.
Mercy means that God’s steadfast and eternal love meets us in the very depths from which we cry. Ultimately, we see this uniquely in Jesus. Jesus enters the place of darkness, the place of death, to bring healing and life to us all.
The beauty of chesed is that God’s loving mercy for you is not about you. God’s mercy is about who God is.
Mercy is a foundation of God’s own identity, not to be denied or discarded. Charles Spurgeon once observed that “our comfort lies not in that which is with us, but that which is with our God.”
When we feel in the depths, we can trust in the Lord’s work of mercy even if we don’t see it at this moment. Eventually, God’s mercy will be revealed in our lives.
Psalm 130 ends with the word of redemption. The psalmist writes, “Let Israel hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption, and God shall redeem Israel from all iniquity” (130:7-8).
No matter how overwhelming the depths of sin may seem, there is nothing stronger than God’s redemptive power in our lives. Nothing can overtake God’s loving desire to work restoration and new life in us.
We often think that redemption is merely about our entrance into heaven. Yet if we look at scripture, we see that redemption is always about our present-day lives. God’s redemption frees us to live free in the light and love of God. God is in the business of new life, always.
When I was struggling with the ocean depths, it felt like I would never work my way out. Yet my father, seeing my plight, swooped into the water, scooped me up, and carried me to shore. In my father’s arms, I was safe.
This is redemption. Redemption promises you that the depths will not overtake you. Redemption speaks the hope-filled word that, at some point, the Lord who watches over you will scoop you from the depths and rescue you.
Forgiveness, mercy, and redemption are the words that God speaks over us. More than pleasant phrases to give us comfort, these words describe the truth of who God is. God is forgiving. God is merciful. God is redemptive.
Despite whatever depths we face at times, can we allow these words to give us hope?
For further reading:
How to Have Hope in Anxious Times
Does Jesus Understand Our Suffering?
Why Does God ‘Hurl All Our Iniquities into the Depths of the Sea?’
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/Stanislav Hubkin
