Tender Mercies

 Tender Mercies

Lord, don’t hold back your tender mercies from me. My only hope is in your unfailing love and faithfulness. For troubles surround me—too many to count! They pile up so high I can’t see my way out. They are more numerous than the hairs on my head. I have lost all my courage. Please, Lord, rescue me! Come quickly, Lord, and help me.Psalm 40:11-13

Like the psalmist, each of us encounters seasons when we face not just one problem but waves of troubles that crash into our lives like breakers incessantly battering the shore. If we are not experiencing that now, we surely will somewhere down the road: Perhaps a child becomes chronically ill, or a teenager rebels and breaks our hearts. Our mother may be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and move in with us so that we’re providing care 24/7, juggling a stressful job, and finding ourselves assailed by financial difficulties. Our troubles pile up so high that we can’t see our way out, and we understand what the psalmist was feeling when he said that they are more numerous than the hairs on our heads. Life seems to unravel, we are weary, and courage drains away as we wonder, Can I handle all of this? What if something else happens? This is the time to lift up our heads to heaven, to cry out, as the psalmist did, for God’s tender mercies, to say, “Come quickly, Lord, and help me” (v. 13), and to put our hope in his unfailing love and faithfulness.

LORD, today as troubles surround me, I turn my focus to you. Come quickly, Lord, and help and rescue me. Don’t hold back your tender mercies in my life—release them, I pray! May showers of mercy and blessing come down from you. My only hope is in your unfailing love and faithfulness. You are my helper and my saviour.

God hath two wings, which he doth ever move, The one is mercy, and the next is love; Under the first the sinners ever trust, And with the last, he still directs the just.

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)