1-7-2025

Good Morning All,

        Psalm 42:8; “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”

    Last night I had one of those nights.  I went to bed and went to sleep, about an hour later I woke up and that was the end of the night.  I got up and got some work done.  I have these nights sometimes; not often enough to cause problems.  I remember talking to a gentleman who told me he woke up at 3:30am almost every night. He asked if I ever did that. I told him some of my better sermons were written at that time of the day. Sometimes we have nights like this because of stress or worry; those are the nights that are the most troublesome.

    Those nights can be tough.  We are physically tired, but our mind won’t shut off and be quiet.  We lay there and replay the day’s events.  When we do this, it is rarely positive.  We tend to focus on every pain, every failure, every lost moment, and opportunity.   We lay there and feel each hurt that we experienced, and each hurt we caused.  We replay each hurtful word, each disappointment and each fear experienced.

     We lay there, tossing and turning, not resting while the cares of this day replay themselves over and over.  Our sinful nature has a grand old time punishing us with little if any sleep and with little if any rest.  Eventually, our sinful self convinces us that the struggle we face are insurmountable and that we fight it all alone.  This type of thinking will wear us out in a hurry.

    God’s gift to us is the sweet sound of the soothing lullaby of his grace.  He gives to us his blessed peace and comfort.  When we stay in communication with, when we stay in communion with him, through reading and hearing his Word and speaking to God in prayer.  He comes to us with the soothing sound of his mercy, the forgiveness of sins which he promises to us because of the redemption through Jesus.  He gives us the calming sounds of his grace where we receive the blessings which we do not deserve.  His steadfast love, that never fails love, is there for us, sustaining us with its infinite power. 

     God comes to us with his love to give us rest; the rest and the peace which the world so desperately tries to hide from us.  The world uses deceit and deception to deny us the rest and the peace which God wants us to have.  He comforts us with the soothing voice of the Good Shepherd calling us by name so that we know that we are safe within his loving arms.  God’s grace gives us hope and security better than any blanket even better than our mother’s arms.  God holds you close to him and sings to you the lullaby of peace and rest.

Dear Father, you comfort and soothe us with your Gospel reassuring sound.  Through it we hear your gentle heartbeat as we cling close to you.  Give us peace, give us rest that we may be refreshed to serve you in your kingdom.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.       

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret