Thanksgiving at times of deliverance

Thanksgiving and Praise: Psalms 33 and 34

Reflect for a moment on times when you have felt relief and perhaps even victory after a long and difficult struggle. Just the other day I had such an experience. There was a person in my life whom I found it hard to forgive for a great many years. One day recently, during a discussion with friends, a special insight came to me: an awareness of how terribly unhappy that person was and how it was easy to understand why things had turned out the way they did. And behold! It was as if I had been set free from the tyranny of resentment and bitterness. I was able to forgive, and was also able to love that person, and, for the first time in many years, I was able to pray for that person with compassion and even with love. I’d been set free! I hadn’t expected it to happen: it was a gift given to me by the Lord at a time He had chosen. Now the war was over and I was at peace, and my soul became that much lighter.

I turned to Psalm 33, the next one in our series, and found out it was a psalm of joy and praise by a nation which had been set free from warfare. How appropriate. Here are some verses that you can use a little prayers at appropriate times. They all speak of our overriding theme in this series: they speak oh how God cares for us.

They are happy whose God is the Lord,

the people he has chosen as his own.  (v 12)

The Lord looks on those who revere him,

on those who hope in his love,

to rescue their souls from death,

to keep them alive in famine.  (v 18-19)

May your love be upon us, O Lord,

as we place all our hope in you.  (v22)

And now we turn to Psalm 34, which is also a psalm of praise:

I sought the Lord and he answered me;

from all my terrors he set me free.  (v 5)

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

He is happy who seeks refuge in him. (v 9)

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted;

those whose spirit is crushed he will save. (v 19)

The Lord ransoms the souls of his servants.

Those who hide in him shall not be condemned. (v 23)

·         This verse in particular sends me to the cross, to the locus of our ransoming. We can draw faith from the reassurance given to us that we will not be damned. Think also of the Good Thief and the salvation we won by his simple statement of faith at the very last hour.

God bless you.