Costly

I suppose it’s apropos that this passage come up at this time of my life.

I actually was thinking on this passage a couple of days ago, when for the second time in several months, I lost a pastor to cancer. I hadn’t seen either of them in some time, but both made their marks in my life.

Leave it to God’s timing to bring this passage up again in the devotional I’m going through.

The ropes of death were wrapped around my two friends and eventually took them. They encountered trouble and sorrow, and yet in their dying days, they both cried out as the psalmist did,

I believed, even when I said,
“I am severely oppressed.” (Psalm 116:10)

But what strikes me is something that was noted by the writer of the devotional I mentioned. In verse 15, the psalmist wrote,

The death of his faithful ones
is valuable in the Lord’s sight. (15)

Most translations say that the death of his faithful ones are “valuable” or “precious” in God’s sight. But another possible translation is “costly.”

The death of God’s faithful ones is costly in his sight. It breaks his heart to see his beloved fall to death. To see them suffer. To see the grief that their deaths leave behind in their loved ones.

But the truth is, we all deserve death because all of us have sinned. Yet God was not satisfied to let his people simply die for their sin.

He saw our brokenness, he saw our grief, he saw our pain…and he sent his Son.

There on the cross, Jesus bore the ultimate cost of our sin. And so while we still face death in this world, it is not the end.

Instead, because of Jesus, even in death, we can say,

Return to your rest, my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you.

For you, Lord, rescued me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.

I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living. (7-9)

How can we repay the Lord for all his good he has done for us? We can’t. All we can do is lift up the cup of salvation he has offered to us and call on his name.

O Lord, I will offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. Hallelujah. (17, 19)