Praise be to you, Elohim, the Creator God, the Powerful One, the Faithful Ruler. You are perfect in your character, unchanging in your goodness, complete in your maturity, absolute in your righteousness, all pervasive in your wisdom.
How unlike us: we waver, vacillate, are up and down, fearful one moment, overly aggressive the next. I praise you, Lord, for your great and wonderful patience with us in this.
Today I thank you that you have brought Barbara home from the hospital, thinking clearly, stable physically, able to function adequately. This is your great answer to the prayers of many and I praise you for it.
As it says in Psalm 35:18 “I will give you thanks in the great assembly; among throngs of people I will praise you.”
[One thing I praise you for is giving the faith to offer praise before this beautiful answer came. You reminded me often that you have a plan, that you are sovereign, that I could trust in the darkness what you taught me in the light. Or as one person described it, when the train went into the tunnel, you kept me from getting off, but had me rest in you until it came out the other side into the light again.
Truly, you are good, Lord, all the time. Most often people say this after everything works out according to their desires—which requires no faith.
But it is in a sense even more true that you are good when everything falls apart, when we lose what we cherish, when nothing seems to work right, when all goes from bad to worse. Then we have the opportunity to praise by faith, to live by faith.
And then when you do bring us out into the light again, it is more more delicious, marvelous than ever because we are closer to you, especially on an emotional level, having joined you in your work in the darkness by rejecting the desires of our emotions to complain and instead offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Lord help us to ever respond this way, remembering that no matter how bad things look, you have a plan, a plan for good to prosper us, to give us hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). Yours is a plan to lead us out into a wider space, a deeper walk with you, a more effective life. May you ever be exalted for your unwavering goodness, Lord.
May we ever remember that we can trust you no matter how bad things get and in the midst of distress, in faith, willfully, wholeheartedly offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving so that you may be honored, opening the way for you to show us the salvation of the Lord (Ps. 50:23).
