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Songs for the Suffering

Songs for the Suffering

Here’s a list of songs that my family has found helpful and comforting as we’ve faced various forms of suffering:

It Is Well

Be Still My Soul

He Will Hold Me Fast

Relief

Sustainer

Reckless Love

Lead Me To The Rock

I Will Never Leave You Alone

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If you’re interested here’s my thoughts on singing songs of ministries that you disagree with.

*Photo by James Barr

The Bible on the Shortness of Life

The Bible on the Shortness of Life

What does the Bible say about the length of our days? It says are days are short. Here’s the Bible on the shortness of life:

Job 8:9

“For we are but of yesterday and know nothing,
for our days on earth are a shadow.”

Psalm 39:4-5

“O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!”

Psalm 90:10

“The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

Psalm 103:15-16

“As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.”

James 4:13-15

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

What hope is there in the face of death? In the face of the shortness of life?

 

*Photo by Scott Rodgerson

Layout your Lament to the LORD (Psalm 10)

The Bible teaches us that we can layout our lament[1] to the LORD. We can cry out to Him for help or to honestly share our disillusionment. Lament psalms make up around a third of the book of Psalms and is the most numerous type of psalm within Psalms.[2] And so we see, “The vast majority of psalms were written out of a real-life struggle of faith.”[3]

The Bible teaches us that we can layout our lament to the LORD. We can cry out to Him for help or to honestly share our disillusionment.

Here we’re looking at Psalm 10.

Cry for Help (v. 1)

The first thing we see the psalmists does in this psalm is cry out for justice. “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”

We too can take our honest wrestling to the LORD. In fact, that is what we must do. We must bring our laments to the LORD.

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