“…the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.” (Psalm 121:6)
Building on the image of God watching over us and renewing us as the shade at our right hand, Psalm 121:6 reassures us the sun will not harm us by day. Since most of us probably aren’t particularly at risk of sunstroke like the Israelites singing this Psalm while walking arid roads originally, it’s easy to skip past.
But what is the harm of the sun?
Read as poetry, we see it as over-exposure. It’s something that bears down on us relentlessly, draining us dry as we keep pressing on.
That we can probably understand, and the same promise applies.
Just as God provides for us in the work we have to keep doing, just as the Lord offers us rest as we persevere in faithfulness, just as He renews us in little ways, the Lord protects us from what threatens to wear us out entirely.
He protects us in all sorts of ways, and one of them is by sustaining us. He won’t let the relentless things in our lives wreck us.
2 Corinthians 4:8-10 describes this; “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”
We might be worn out, but we’re not beyond God’s sustaining power. Death, and all the things that even feel like dying after day, don’t have the final say. Jesus made a way, and His own death and resurrection prove it. Praise God.
What feels relentless in your life? How is the Lord sustaining you anyway?
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