May 30, 2024 - Psalms 81-85

Our God is a pursuing God!  How do I know this?  Well, consider the words of Asaph:  “The Lord said to Israel, ‘In distress you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder. . . . O Israel, if you would but listen to me! . . . I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. . . . Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes.’”  The Lord desires his people to listen to him, to turn to him, to rest in him.  Our God is a pursuing God!  How do I know this?  Hear Jesus:  “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:4-5).  And what can the words of John – “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19) – mean but that, before we ever came to him, he loved us and drew us to himself?  Thompson’s hymn has received so much ridicule, especially from those of us of a more Reformed persuasion, but who among us weary ones can help but remember the sweet words of our Savior as he called us to himself!

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,

calling for you and for me;

see, on the portals he's waiting and watching,

watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home;

you who are weary come home;

earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

calling, O sinner, come home!   --Will L. Thompson (1880)