Psalm 130

A Song of Ascents.

 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!

O Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,

O Lord, who could stand?

 But with you there is forgiveness,

that you may be feared.

 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

 my soul waits for the Lord

more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

 O Israel, hope in the Lord!

For with the Lord there is steadfast love,

and with him is plentiful redemption.

 And he will redeem Israel

from all his iniquities.

The phrase that stood out today is: "my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning." The picture I immediately latched onto was that of the watchman, on the city walls, dreading the dangers that the night could hold and his yearning, almost pleading, for morning to come and with it, light and some sense of security.

I don't know if you have felt that way very often, but I have. At times I have felt that my life's footing was not firm and that I was perilously close to danger, failure, shame, or despair. I have longed for morning to come in the form of some deliverance from my oppressive circumstances. I have yearned for a deliverance that I could not see anywhere on the horizon, nor could I conceive how it might be formed, yet I hoped for it desperately.

But there is something else to be discovered in the picture of the watchman and it is the certainty of the  morning's arrival. The morning will come - has it ever failed to come? This watchman not only can hope, but he can be certain. The morning will come.

And so for us who are in Christ. I don't know how long the night will last in your life or mine. But morning has never failed to come and it will come again.