In today's reading, we once again visit Psalm 89. If you recall, we spent a little time in this chapter in Week 3 discussing how He is the greatest amongst the Divine Counsel and how He alone is worshipped. Today we look a little deeper at the chapter's themes to help us process what it means for God to give humanity a fresh start after the flood.

The entire Psalm is a song about covenant, celebrating God's promises to David. It proclaims His faithful love to his future generations. But there's an odd plot twist in the passage ... it's full of tension. The circumstances don't seem to match up well with the promise or the praise.

But that's precisely what makes it so powerful.

As we've noted already, worship in the midst of pain and crisis isn't a denial of reality, it is a declaration of a deeper one. The psalmist here breathes the promise and the pain with the same breath. He doesn't abandon the covenant when times are tough, or feel contradictory to what the promise states ... instead, he sings praises to the Most High.

Relying on Covenant faithfulness and His enduring goodness means our worship isn't a trophy of how well we've done, it's gratitude for how faithful He has been. Not just for us, but across all generations.

The thread of promise has never broken; from Noah to Abraham to David to Christ, and now to us. This worship is remembering the promise more loudly than we remember the failure.

This Psalm resonates with me in very deep ways. As we've watched our daughter suffer the past 18 years with intense disabilities, pain, and every imaginable hardship, we sometimes must remind ourselves to worship in the midst of the storm ... and sometimes that's really hard. But His faithfulness has proven over and over again to be immeasurable and comforting beyond any explanation.

We constantly look forward to His eventual healing, but we also rely on His very near presence in the hear and now. While we wait, we borrow the words of David and we  "will sing about the LORD’s faithful love forever; we will proclaim His faithfulness to all generations
with our mouths."
 

It's hard on our minds and hearts when we read of God's promise of peace and provision then experience circumstances which seem contrary to it. Our flesh wants so badly to yield to the emotion of the moment while our Spirit knows the path of peace which is worship no matter what.

When your immediate circumstances seem out of sync with God’s promises, how do you respond? How can you proclaim His faithfulness through the valleys of life?

Father, I know your love reaches back much further than my memory and far deeper than my immediate thoughts. Teach me to sing of your covenant and echo your praises even when I feel lost in the moment and can't understand what is happening around me. Help my life to testify to your unchanging faithfulness. In Jesus name, Amen.