Thoughts for the Day

Thanksgiving for Recovery from Illness

I love the Lord, because he has heard
my voice and my supplications.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
‘O Lord, I pray, save my life!’

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
The Lord protects the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
I walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
I kept my faith, even when I said,
‘I am greatly afflicted’;
I said in my consternation,
‘Everyone is a liar.’

What shall I return to the Lord
for all his bounty to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones.
O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the child of your serving-maid.
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people,
in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

I watched a programme recently about a British Royal Navy ship that showed them during a moment of deliberate communications blackout as they sought to find a Russian submarine who was trying to spy on them. To contact another ship in the fleet they used morse code. Apparently the British navy is one of the only navies in the world still to learn and use this old way of passing a message. This reminded me of an even earlier system, which I learnt many years ago in the Brownies and then again in the 1960s in the Air Force. I refer to the Semaphore system that uses flags. The picture above, signals SOS or Save our souls, the international message of distress!

In Psalm 116 we see that the psalmist has been very ill, indeed he believed he was going to die. He says the "pangs of Sheol laid hold on me", in other words he thought he was going to the place of the dead. In desperation we hear that he called on the name of the Lord: "O Lord, I pray, save my life!"

Many of us will have prayed for deliverance from pain and sickness for ourselves or for loved ones at some time or other, but this is different. The psalmist uses the "name of the Lord". In the Hebrew scriptures a person's name was more than a name to call someone by, it was a description of their character. The writer of Psalm 116 had sent out a distress signal, an SOS as it were, to the One who gave His name to Moses as "I am" (ie Yahweh). It is He who rules the universe, who send His Son to save us, and who has promised never to leave us.

↠ May we use the names "God" and "Jesus" as reverently as the psalmist when we need help, and as gratefully when our prayer is answered through the power of the Holy Spirit!

Lord God,
when we are desperate for help
may we turn to You instinctively,
knowing that you are there to rescue us.
When things are well again
may we be as quick to remember to
respond with grateful thanks and praise.
Amen.