Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. – Psalm 68:19

Today's Scripture Reading (August 30, 2025): Psalm 68

I recently taught on what might be the most challenging passage in Paul's Letter to the Thessalonians. It is a familiar passage, but to be honest, I think most of us ignore what Paul says in hopes that maybe the passage will go away. At the very least, I think we treat this passage as one that is simply impossible to follow in our complicated contemporary world. What is this strange passage? "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). I mean, surely this is an exaggeration. How can we ever be thankful for every circumstance in our lives? I believe that life is a gift, but I also know that every life comes with its own challenges and difficulties. How could even God expect us to be thankful in our times of struggle?

Yet, I don't think that this passage is an exaggeration. In my teaching, I went back to five months when I went through a time of extreme stress, which included friends who were sentenced to prison for a significant period, the death of a friend due to misadventure, and the attempted suicide of another friend. The five-month period ended with the kidnapping of my roommate and then me being held at gunpoint in my apartment.

It was a harrowing story to tell, and not everyone received the story well. For some, it was just too much. As I taught, I felt the angry looks coming at me from some of the people in the room. However, now I get to look at this time in my life from a different perspective. When I was going through this time of trial, any possible purpose seemed impossible. Yet now, I can see the positives that emerged from this time of extreme stress. And one of them is that as a direct result of this time, the following year, I decided to go to a school that was 1500 kilometers away from where I had spent my first year of post-secondary education. When I was teaching, I had just celebrated forty-four years of marriage with my wife, and I knew that if it weren't for this troubling season of my life, I would never have met her. It might have been a trying time, but out of it grew some of the most important relationships in my life.

David writes, "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens" (Psalm 68:19). I love the way that David Guzik translates this passage, "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits." It isn't far from Paul's instructions to the Thessalonians: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18a). Every day God blesses us, even in our times of trial. We may not see it immediately, but I believe that God blesses us. And we need to thank God for even these temporarily unseen blessings. We need to accept by faith something else that Paul wrote, this time to the Romans. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). Every day, God really does load us with benefits that come directly from his hand.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 69