Psalm 66:11-12

Psalm 66:11-12 

You brought us to a place of abundance

These two verses probably refer to the dark days in Israel’s experience many years previously. Jacob had gone down to Egypt with his 11 sons and his daughter, taking a household of 80, and there he had been reconciled with his favourite boy, Joseph. Joseph had cared for his family and placed them in the land of Goshen where they prospered with their flocks and avoided the worst excesses of a famine that had devastated that part of the world. 400 years later, the family party had expanded to over 2 million people and they had become a threat to the Egyptians. Pharaoh brutally killed their firstborn sons and turned the survivors into slaves who worked on his latest building projects. Life was ridiculously hard until the Lord God devised a scheme to deliver them and appointed Moses to take them to a land of promise and of plenty. 

The writer sees these experiences as being orchestrated by God, both the bad and the good times. With hindsight that has to be true, each good time was coloured by the bad that followed, but without the bad there would have been no ultimate deliverance and fulfilment of God’s covenant promises. 

It takes a great deal of faith to be able to trust the Lord that everything is working out for good when in fact, the opposite seems to be true. 

It is not easy to “Praise the Lord” when we are imprisoned by circumstances or cruel enemies. It is very difficult to take positives from any situation where grief or hardship or suffering are the order of every day. 

It is also difficult to offer empathy or sympathy to those who are “going through it” when none of us can see the point! 

However, without those bad experiences we can never learn to trust the Lord fully. Jesus warned, “I have told you these things so that in me you might have peace. In this world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world!” John 16:33. Hallelujah!

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