Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your torrents; all your waves and your billows have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
- Psalm 42:7-8
With summer break winding down, my family spent a couple days at the beach at the beginning of this week—no sightseeing, no plans, just two days in the sand and the water soaking up the sun. Everybody has their own favorite activity at the beach—Katherine likes playing in the sand, Andrew likes the pool, etc. Personally, my favorite thing to do is to swim out deep enough that my feet can no longer touch the sand beneath me and to just bob up and down in the water, letting the waves break over and around me. There’s something oddly peaceful about the repetition of those waves, each one a little different than the one before it, yet all coming in a steady, unceasing rhythm.
Life can feel those waves, constantly crashing into you without a break. Its stresses and anxieties can feel endless, routine only in the sense that they never stop. That’s the situation the psalmist describes at the beginning of Psalm 47, when he describes his soul thirsting for God the way a deer pants for water. “Why,” he asks, “are you cast down, o my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?”
But just as life’s rollers and breakers never seem to cease, neither does God’s mercy. “Deep calls to deep,” the psalmist says. God responds to your cries with his presence. When you pray to him, those prayers do not vanish into the wind; they rise to heaven. God hears you, he cares, and he responds.
Believers often compare the slings and arrows of life to a storm, the kind of wind and waves that Jesus and his disciples faced on the Sea of Galilee. But know this—as powerful as those trials may be, they cannot compare to the power of the Lord. Cry out to him today and find his mercy.
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