Daily Lesson for July 2, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Psalm 129 verses 1 through 4:

Let Israel now say—
2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.
3 The plowers plowed upon my back;
they made long their furrows.”
4 The Lord is righteous;
he has cut the cords of the wicked.

I want you to know something. I want you to know something about who you are.  I want you to consider for a moment all the things you have endured - the scornful looks, the bitter words, the shaming, the belittling, the ridicule, the disgraces, the things they did, the words they said - words which cut deeper than flesh and cut you like a knife, all the way into your heart.  "And a sword shall pierce your soul as well."

I want you to consider these things for a moment - painful though they be.  I want you to consider them, and I want you to know that you are a survivor.  You are a strong, strong, blood made of iron, survivor.

And God has come to heal your wounds.  The LORD has come to clear the field plowed deep with 14 or 40 or 400 years of indignity and dehumanization.  He has come to lift up valleys and make rough spaces smooth.  He has come to cut the cords that you might no longer be a beast of burden, enslaved to who you were or who somebody said you were.  The LORD has come to redeem you, to set you free, to make you whole.

You are indeed already a survivor; and you can be even more.