ARE YOU IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING? -- Devotional for October 17, from "Good Seeds"

(Dear reader: Hang in there, I'll get caught up yet. I'm still under the influence of jetlag from our return from Japan last Friday, and lagging behind in entries, due to lack of time in Japan to write)

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:13-14)

This is an expression I have used, unaware it came straight from Scripture. When seeing someone after a long separation due to illness or depression, I might say, “Well, it looks like you’re in the land of the living after all!” David relates our well being to God’s goodness, apart from which we sense nothing but hopeless despair. Many things militate against hope. The first of these is when our bodies don’t cooperate. That’s when we can get pretty despondent. But the worst of these may be when life doesn’t cooperate, and we begin to languish in the doldrums of discouragement. Even the best of us – even as sterling an example of a Christian as the apostle Paul – can be forced to endure trials so harsh as to cause us to entertain thoughts of our own death, thinking of it as the better alternative to what we are now made to suffer. In Paul’s very personal letter to his friends in Corinth we hear his candid thoughts about death: he’s not wishing for it, but he’s definitely resigned to it: “We would not have you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of living” (II Corinthians 1:8). Have you ever been burdened excessively, beyond all your inner resources for coping or enduring, and you just wanted to die? It could be the suffering of pain, physical or emotional, or the oppression of guilt, or a loss we just knew would be our undoing, or something else we were sure meant the end of life as we knew it – and the sooner that end came, the better! God sees us in such predicaments, but He doesn’t leave us in them. And He wants us to see Him, in them. David said the despair was there, knocking at his door, but right behind it, shrouded in the mist, hovered the Spirit of God, the very presence and essence of the goodness of God. But seeing this, seeing Him, takes faith: “I would have despaired had I not BELIEVED.” And that vision of God, of His goodness, fueled by faith, gives us the strength to wait for Him to “complete the work He has begun in us” (Philippians 1:6). Knowing He’s at work in our lives gives us the patience to wait. Knowing His goodness will finally have its victory in us can give great encouragement to our hearts. When things go wrong for children of the world, they take a pill; but when things go wrong for the children of God, we take courage, finding strength in Him to help us in our time of need. This is what it means to be “in the land of the living.” Is that where you and I reside today?