Wednesday, November 19, 2025
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety.” (Psalm 18:2, The New Living Translation)
Susan has been my rock in our journey together. As a father and a pastor, she has been the one who has kept me from faltering many a time. We have been through thick and thin; yet she is the one whom I trust in this life more than anyone else. It is funny how so many times we are thinking the exact same thing at the same time. Susan has been my support, my advisor, my corrector, my love. When she was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, it scared me to no end that I might lose her. I would be lost without her. There is an old Willie Nelson song with which I really identify: “Maybe I didn't love you Quite as often as I could have; Maybe I didn't treat you Quite as good as I should have; If I made you feel second-best; Girl, I'm sorry I was blind. (Chorus] You were always on my mind, You were always on my mind. … And I guess I never told you I'm so happy that you're mine. Little things I should have said and done I just never took the time. [Chorus]And you were always on my mind. You were always on my mind”
So the words from Psalm 18, although
they certainly apply to God, reach down and have application to my life with Susan.
She, too, has been my shield many a time, the love that has saved me from myself,
and my place of safety when I get in my own way or life gets rough.
I am such an old, sentimental, romantic
fool! How has she put up with me? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)
What this Psalm celebrates is a relationship with
God that is intimately close. God is not aloof, not a distant outsider. God is there
for us each and every day. God desires our best welfare through his Love for
us. He doesn’t abandon us to the consequences of our own actions and decisions.
Maybe we don’t always love him quite as often as we should, but his Love for us
never stops reaching out to us in both good and bad times.
Jesus wanted us to understand the close intimacy we may enjoy with God
when he called God, “Father.” I know that some people have very negative, painful images of
fatherhood but let Jesus repair that image by the Love that he incarnated, the Word
became flesh. “Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful
heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own
children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out,
“Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make
it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re
also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.” (Galatians 4: 4 -7,
The Message Bible)
God is Love and desires us to live that Love in our earthly relationships,
husbands and wives, marital partners, parents and children, siblings, or even
church as “family.” Our closest and
dearest relationships are filtered through the intimate Love of God. “Those who have been born into God’s family
do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t
keep on sinning, because they are children of God.” (1 John 3:9)
God is the Rock upon which we build all of our lives. “It is like a
person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock.
When the floodwaters rise and break against that house, it stands firm because
it is well built.” (Luke 6:48)
Forty-seven years have been a
living witness to God’s good Grace.
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