“LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.” So prayed Heman in Psalm 88:1.

He then went on to chronicle his lack of strength, feelings of death, despair, isolation, grief, sense of betrayal, rejection and terror!

One of the things that strikes me about Heman’s prayer is that it opens with a proclamation of faith. He calls upon the “God who saves me”—or, as it is translated in the ESV, the “God of my salvation.”

When we hear the word “salvation” we usually think about heaven and being eternally at peace with God. That is certainly a huge part of it; but in Psalm 88 Heman is also crying out for relief and rescue from his current here-and-now reality.

Let’s note something important. Even though he is going through the valley of the shadow of death, he doesn’t lose faith. He may not feel the relief and rescue of God in his current situation, but that doesn’t mean that God is unloving or uninvolved.

Ronnie Martin points out that God tells his people to wait and hope 227 times in the Bible.* That’s a lot. Waiting and hope and waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping.

Here’s what I want to remind you about: Pain may be a chapter in your story, but it isn’t the only chapter, and it certainly isn’t the final chapter.

These days we’re not used to waiting. We have microwaves and instant messaging. But we still can’t control the timing of everything. You can’t rush a pregnancy, you can’t rush the turning of the seasons, and you can’t rush the timing and wisdom of God.

Trust in a God who saves—even if you have to wait.

Pain may be a chapter in your story, but it isn’t the only chapter, and it certainly isn’t the final chapter.

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Notes:

—PAUSE: The Up Devotional will go on pause for a week, but will return on June 12, 2023.

–“Darkness is my closest friend.” That’s a podcast Bible study on Psalm 88, a text one scholar called the darkest in the book. Click here to listen, or look for ‘The Pulse Podcast with Matthew Ruttan’ wherever you subscribe to podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Audible or TuneIn.

–*As quoted in: “Why the pastors aren’t quitting” by Sarah eekhoff Zylstra. Published by The Gospel Coalition here on May 22, 2023.

–Bible quotes are from the NIV.