The Rest of the Story

“How precious it is, Lord, to realize that You are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day Your thoughts turn to me. And when I waken in the morning, You are still thinking of me!”—Psalm 139:17-18, Living Bible

Sometimes, an old song will come out of nowhere, and you remember every word of it and where you were when you sang it, and the (usually good) memories associated with it. But sometimes, "out of nowhere" is really meant for somewhere and in fact for right now and for you, and for a good and needed Word at just the right time.

For such a week as this, one like:

"The Lord thy God (echo, echo) in the midst of thee (echo, echo), is mighty, is mighty..."

Simple comfort food from the Book of Zephaniah. Fully nourishing. Blessed assurance. Right?

And yet, hardly fluff and Christian-lite. Because what made this "out of nowhere" just-in-time song so powerful is the rest of the story, and the story for our lives:

It was written in the midst of chaos...

"Yet God remains righteous in her midst, untouched by the evil. He stays at it, day after day, meting out justice. At evening he’s still at it, strong as ever."

—Zephaniah 3:5

...It is good to know, as the Word promises, that God is with us. Better still to realize that He's even more than that. That when the world is in turmoil, when our day, our week, our life gets nuts, when some things just don’t make sense, and even during a restless night sleep filled with crazy dreams because your day was on overload, God is not just "with us" out there somewhere or observing from the grandstand of Heaven.

He is "still at it, strong as ever," actively, mightily, lovingly "with us" in the midst of it all.

"Having the reality of God's presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually."—Oswald Chambers