I wait for You, O LORD; You will answer, O LORD my God. Psalm 38:15.

He was despised and forsaken of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3.

What is the price of five sparrows – two copper coins? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows. Luke 12:6-7.

And continuing our 351 Old Testament prophecies, promises of God, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we come to number 68: His humiliation and exaltation. Psalm 8:5-6: Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet. And, Hebrews 2:5-9: For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking. But one has testified somewhere, saying, “What is man, that You remember him? Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and have appointed him over the works of Your hands; You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

I loved this this morning in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers concerning sin: “We are not “acquainted with grief” in the same way our LORD was acquainted with it. We endure it and live through it, but we do not become intimate with it. At the beginning of our lives we do not bring ourselves to the point of dealing with the reality of sin…But as we continue on through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin – and it upsets all our thinking and our plans. Sin has made the foundation of our thinking unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational. We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue – if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more fundamental than that. The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in your history and in mine – that is, sin will kill the life of God in us. We must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. It is the only explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.”

Sometimes we need to see sin for what it is. Mutiny against God destroying us. But never forget, Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit, does not leave us in our sins. He knows all that sin does to us better than we do, and He loves us too much to leave us in that awful misery. He loves us so much that He died for us, that we could live with Him without sin for all eternity. The very Creator become the Firstborn of all creation. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. Colossians 1:13-18.

What about us personally, today? What pain is hard for you today – the grief and sorrow of life? He knows. And He asks you to give it to Him. He reminded me this morning in prayer not to fear the pain I am feeling. Separation is painful. But the beautiful thing is, He knows how deep the wounding of sin goes in our souls and the souls of those we love. I’m not strong enough to hold that for the healing needed. But I’m strong enough to give it all to Him and stand with Him as He brings comfort to my heart and hope to my spirit. And with Him I find renewed hope and joy for what will be, the working of which only He can bring to fruition in us.

***ADDRESS GOD WITH MY HEART Give me grace, Almighty Father, to pray as to deserve to be heard and to address You with my heart as well as my lips. You are everywhere present; from You no secret can be hidden. May the knowledge of this teach me to fix my thoughts on You with reverence and devotion, that I may not pray in vain. May I now, and on each return of morning, consider how I will spend the day ahead: What thoughts will prevail in my mind? What words will I speak? Will my actions reflect Your will or my own? How far can I acquit myself of evil and live in the goodness and beauty of my LORD Christ? Will I think irreverently of You? Will I disobey Your commandments? Will I neglect and make excuses for any known duty, and will I knowingly give pain to any human being? Incline me to ask my heart these questions, O God, throughout the day, to save me from deceiving myself by pride or vanity. And give me always a thankful sense of the blessings in which I live and the many comforts of my lot, that I may not deserve to lose them by discontent or indifference. Hear me, Almighty God, for the sake of He who has redeemed me and taught me thus to pray. Amen. Jane Austen (1775-1817), “On Each Return of the Night,” janeausten.co.uk. Adapted.***