GIVE ME LIFE! Psalm 119:153-160 (God's Alphabet Song of Truth - RESH) #20

Sarah Groves' best album, in my view, is one entitled Conversations.  In one song from the collection, she sings about an aging friend, a widow, who "just turned 84" and confessing to Sarah that she's "afraid of dying."  Her husband passed years before, and though they had been married decades, (Sarah sings) "when he passed away, she still had more to say."  :-)

There was more life to share.

The song tenderly speaks of our longing to live.  Twice in these 8 verses, the Psalmist cries to God, "Give me life...!"  Affliction, persecutors, adversaries are pressing in hard.  People who disregard God and His testimonies.  Still, they have leverage to make our lives feel less than fully alive.

We all long to experience life in its fullness.  Whether it be  through relational opponents or physical decline,  we hate when our living is being robbed.

IS THERE LIFE AHEAD?

I too have a friend who is dying.  After yet another sojourn to the University of Iowa Medical Center, hopeful of another round of life-extending treatment, he and his wife were told no treatment would be successful nor helpful.  My dear friend is now at the marvelous local Hospice House.  Somehow he's preparing to exit.

Is this the end of life, or is there life ahead?

Look on my affliction and deliver me,

for I do not forget Your law.

Plead my cause and redeem me;

give me life according to Your promise!

Salvation is far from the wicked,

for they do not seek Your statutes.

Great is Your mercy, O Lord;

give me life according to Your rules.

Many are my persecutors and my adversaries,

but I do not swerve from Your testimonies.

I look at the faithless with disgust,

because they do not keep Your commands.

Consider how I love Your precepts!

Give me life according to Your steadfast love.

The sum of Your word is truth,

and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever.

The verse writer understands that life uniquely comes from God.  It comes from  honoring God's word, cherishing it, deriving one's perspective and hope from it.  From "keeping" God's commands.  Believing them.  Counting on His promise, His statutes, His testimonies.

One of the  Lord's best "testimonies"  about life comes from the lips of the Lord's Son. "I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.  And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:26, ESV).

There is a life which comes to us from God that will never experience the thievery our present lives experience.  It comes uniquely from God.  The Lord to whom the Psalmist sang 3 millennia ago.  From the Son who died for us so that we who believe should never taste death.

Life in Him today.  Life from Him in unhindered fullness tomorrow.

"The same of Your word (thankfully!!!) is truth."