And Through It All

Psalm 66

This past weekend we attended a funeral for the brother-in-law of a good friend of ours. It was a wonderful celebration of his life filled with words of remembrance that made us laugh and tearful farewells which made us cry.

Those words were spoken by his sister, his best friend, his children, and his grandson. If you've been to funerals you may be used to or have knowledge of how these things work. If you go to funerals you also know the spouse usually sits through the service, doing their best to keep a strong composure.

Imagine our surprise, then, when the wife got up, moved to the front of the gathered friends and family, and said the closing words of thank you. Not only did she say the words, she said them with a tone of sincere gratitude and sense of relief.

When we passed through the family line after the funeral to convey our condolences I thanked her for her strength and courage. She replied with, "It isn't difficult to be strong when I'm surrounded by people who love me so much."

Today's Psalm brings with it that same kind of feel. Through the Psalm we are invited to love God and be in awe of all that God has done and is doing. We are reminded to continuously praise God with our songs and dances - sort of an extravagant praise of an even more extravagant love.

The Psalm doesn't hide the fact that no matter how good our lives are there will be times when our trust and faith in a loving God will be tested. But, as today's passage from this Psalm reminds us in the end, after the dust settles from those rough patches along our journey we will be brought out into a "spacious place."

Sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in on us. Sometimes we feel as though we've reached the end of the road and into an immovable brick wall. Sometimes it feels like we really have nowhere to go and no way out of the darkness we find ourselves in. It's in those times that we find that through the love of others we begin to see a light come through the cracks in the wall and the bricks of that wall begin to be dismantled one by one.

God will never stop loving us. God brings into our lives the people we need to get through the most difficult times in our lives. All we need to do is let them into our lives so that we can break through the wall, and continue along our journey towards God's love.