Your First Port of Call

Psalm 6:1-3 LORD, don’t punish me. Don’t correct me when you are so angry. LORD, be kind to me. I am sick and weak. Heal me, LORD! My bones are shaking. I am trembling all over. LORD, how long until you heal me? LORD, come back and make me strong again.

Imagine for a moment that you’re out in a small boat and a storm whips up. The wind howls, the storm clouds roll in, the waves toss your boat … what are you going to do?

Those storms happen for many different reasons. Life’s unfair … we blundered badly … God’s decided, for reasons known only to Himself, that it’s time for a storm in your life. Honestly, when you’re in that tiny boat on an angry ocean with a fierce storm raging, the reason really doesn’t matter. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

Our natural instinct is to paddle harder, to call the coast guard. And sure, it’s not a bad thing to put on your life vest, to fire off your emergency beacon. But what if that storm is completely beyond any human capacity to save you?

I often turn to King David’s Psalms because he weathered so many life and death storms. Here’s one of those:

Psalm 6:1-3 LORD, don’t punish me. Don’t correct me when you are so angry. LORD, be kind to me. I am sick and weak. Heal me, LORD! My bones are shaking. I am trembling all over. LORD, how long until you heal me? LORD, come back and make me strong again.

David was in such a bad way. The reason really doesn’t matter although, right or wrong, he perceived his storm to be as a result of God’s anger, God’s punishment. And yet still, in the midst of that storm, He made God his first port of call.

#NoteToSelf: Go to God first, not last.

That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.