Let your steadfast love comfort me
according to your promise to your servant. Psalm 119:76
In this petition, I cry for the comfort that I lack.
In this petition I learn the greatness of my lack.
So great is my discomfort, my disquietedness, my distress – that only the steadfast love of the Lord can meet my need.
By these words it is made clear to me that if I seek my comfort, quietness and peace in anything other than the Lord’s steadfast love, I shall have no comfort, no quietness or peace.
For nothing other than the Lord’s promises made and fulfilled for me – will truly comfort me.
In the verse just prior to this, I acknowledge that the Lord has afflicted me in righteousness.
My prayer in this petition is not that the rod of the Law be removed from me, no matter the level of discomfort,
Rather my prayer is that He would let His steadfast love secure me so that I am comforted according to His promise.
It is paradoxical hope that I should seek mercy from the very Lord who has afflicted me.
Surely I must leave the paradox of this hope to the He who created it and resolves it Jesus Christ
Such hope, and therefore comfort, comes from a faith that believes God’s Word for me is greater than His Word against me.
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
Such was the faith that prayed, “
“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Hosea 6:1-2 (ESV)
As all of God’s promises find their ‘Yes’ in Christ, so also the ‘Yes’ of my comfort in my lack is found in Christ alone.
Through Christ and His Cross,
the crosses that once seemed only to confound, confuse and consume me,
now become fountains from which comes such comfort and consolations so as to always exceed my lack.
For He who keeps the promises of God,
Was deny any comfort in the keeping of those promises as He met me in my lack at the Cross.
No lack of comfort would deter my Lord Jesus Christ from comforting me, one who deserves to lack, to be deny any comfort.
He cries out for no comfort for Himself, only for my forgiveness, only for my comfort in the midst of my guilt.
As the love of God that made and kept this promise for me is steadfast,
so shall my comfort and consolation be steadfast.
As it was purely out of such Divine goodness and mercy that such a promise of comfort came to such a sinner as I,
so it is from the same that this promise is kept to me through Jesus Christ my Lord.
Thanks be to God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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