Hey there, Emmy here! It seems like just yesterday that I was in that little Indiana town of North Judson, surrounded by a family of young people like myself eager to delve into God’s Word. That fervent desire, those people, the Word, and of course, the powerful work of Holy Spirit changed my life incredibly in just two months, but now it is six months later.
It has been half a year since I sat around the tables in the Front Room and listened to speakers present messages on everything from the entire story of the Bible to the doctrine of Romans. It was half a year ago that I cooked meals with my community group and met with them to challenge one another in our faith. And yet there have been six months since my time at English Lake Bible School, six months in the “real world” applying what I learned and daily relying on the same Holy Spirit who revealed Himself to me so newly and beautifully during the course of the summer. It has been six months of life, submersed in its difficulties and joys, its people and places, and through it all the same Jesus has been by my side.
As I think about these past six months of my life, something obvious dawns on me, but it hits me hard: we have all had a past six months. Besides another something obvious (all the babies born after August), everyone in the entire world has had a past six months. It will not have been six months since Bible School for most people, but it could be six months since summer camp, a monumental family vacation, the death of a loved one, the beginning of a relationship. Six months ago may not have even marked anything particularly special in the lives of some people, but regardless we have all seen half a year’s worth of sunsets and sunrises. We have all shared these months on the planet.
The other day I opened my Bible to read a few psalms and I was captured by one particular verse: “I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.” (Psalm 3:5)
In order to refrain from the age-old problem of taking verses out of context, recall that David the psalmist-king had a son named Absalom who attempted to usurp his throne and kill him. This particular psalm was penned during David’s flight from Jerusalem. It could be easily conjectured that he was feeling quite the variety of emotions: betrayal, sorrow, fear, and fatherly love to name a few. However as for me, I did not sense any of those in his words here. What struck me so powerfully was his simple faith and gratitude in the worst of circumstances.
David writes in the first verses of the psalm of the great many people opposing him. There are those rising against him taking Absalom’s side who even say that Yahweh will not save him. Yet in the face of being forced to flee his kingdom, David takes note of the miracle of going to sleep and waking up the next morning. There is something to be said for that simplicity of mind, for that serene thankfulness to the Father.
There is no promise of tomorrow. The Bible often reminds us of that. In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, just after He preaches about laying up treasures in heaven, He encourages people not to worry about the future. There is no guarantee of another minute of life on earth and so as followers of Jesus, we ought to make our allegiance to the Kingdom a priority. Every day Christians walk the line between the present age and the age to come, constantly and consciously ushering in the Kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow is planned prudently, the weeks ahead with wisdom and discernment, but never with more commitment to personal desires than to a Gospel-centered vision.
“I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.”
There is a beautiful faith behind these words. These are the words of a man focused on his Provider of Days, rather than his days on earth. This represents the mindset of a person with such trust in his Sustainer; he will not overlook anything given him.
We have all lived a past six months. We have all lain down to sleep and woken again many times by the grace of our Father, and truth be told, we have often done it without thinking about what a great gift each day is. I know I certainly have. Jesus has been with me all my life, yet I have failed to truly behold him as the One who wakes me each new morning. I go to sleep at night with thoughts of the day to come, sometimes happily looking forward to something exciting or perhaps burdened by some approaching difficulty. Then I wake up, yawn, and stretch, ready for a day I have come to see as my own. In my oversight, I have missed countless opportunities to give thanks to the Sustainer who grants me every minute here on earth. In his psalm, David acknowledged his perceived future and its worrying possibilities, but he let his theme be thankfulness to his Lord, the giver of his salvation. He rested upon the provision of his God, not apart from the concerns of his situation but despite them and within them.
Let that similarly be our motto. Let our attitude be one of fixation upon Abba and all the things He does for us every single day of our lives. May we come to have the faith of David who when pursued by his enemies gave thanks to his Sustainer, for we too are brought through every day by the same Sustainer. In the time that we have on earth, let us move forward continually remembering the God who has woken us from ignorance, and so may we come to be a people who say each morning, “I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.”