LW Baptist

By Rolland Coburn

Pastor

The Bible holds great promises for us. God, Scripture says, is our daily burden-bearer. “Blessed be the Lord, who day by day bears our burden, even the God who is our salvation. Selah” (Psalm 68:19).

“Rolled away, rolled away, rolled away/ Every burden of my heart rolled away/Every sin had to go/‘Neath the crimson flow, hallelujah.”

This gracious word may remind you of our king’s invitation in Psalm 55:22, “Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”

The Lord reviews the history of his intervention for his people. Referring to the Exodus from Egypt, he recalls,“I removed the burden from their shoulders” (Psalm 81:6). He is referring to their oppressive, hard manual labor, building storage cities for Pharaoh. He reminds them that he set their hands free from their basket-loads of heavy mud bricks.

He tells them they were able to weather the inhospitable wilderness for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land because “you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place” (Deuteronomy 1:31).

“Every day the Lord himself is near me/With a special mercy for each hour/All my care he fain would bear and cheer me/He whose name is counselor and power/ The protection of his child and treasure/ Is a charge that on himself he laid/As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure/This the pledge to me he made.”

Not content to limit his rescues to the past, the Lord vows, “Even to your old age I will be the same. And even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you. And I will bear you and I will deliver you” (Isaiah 46:4).

The Gospel songwriter put it this way; “Help me then in every tribulation/ So to trust Thy promises, O Lord/ That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation/Offered me within Thy Holy Word/Help me Lord, when toils and trouble meeting/Ever to take as from a father’s hand/One by one the days the moments fleeting/ Till I reach the promised land.”

Celebrating our burdenbearer reaches climax with the Hebrew word “selah.” Selah essentially means “hip, hip, hooray!” It celebrates today what God has done and will do every day of our lives when we accept by faith his saving work for us in Christ and respond with praise to him and heartfelt thanksgiving for his great salvation.