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Psalm 119 – Day 18

Psalm 119:75-77

I know, Lord, that Your laws are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me. May Your unfailing love be my comfort, according to Your promise to Your servant. Let Your compassion come to me that I may live, for Your law is my delight.

The Thought

We do not know what the affliction is that David was suffering from, but we can imagine that he recovered from that affliction, because he had a long adventurous life. It is interesting that he treated the affliction, whatever it was, as a gift from his Heavenly Father.

There are things to learn from most of our personal experiences during life on earth, sadly, most of us don’t recognise that until it is almost too late for the lesson.

In my own life, on the occasions when there have been difficulties, in the family, with work, or just life in general, my prayer has often been: “Lord, please teach us what we must learn from this and let us move on.” Most of us can say that we have learned something from most of the bad things that have happened to us, but most of us would not have the audacity to accuse God as David did: “You have afflicted me!”

Peter the apostle tells us to rejoice in our sufferings and treat them as participating in the “sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:12-14). Paul who had learned a lot from his own suffering of blindness, had a similar attitude (Colossians 1:24).

Action

Do you treat “affliction” as a gift, a blessing, and something to learn from, or is it a punishment from God and something to be lived through, remembering that we all live in a fallen world?

Read 1 Peter 4 and/or Colossians 1 today to see what both servants of God, Peter and Paul felt about sufferings.

Pray today for those you know, who are suffering in whatever way, divorce, rejection, sickness, loneliness.

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