Kyle Dresback

Dear Friends,

I have a friend who has experienced it all: poverty, violence, addiction, and tragedy both of his own making and as a result of dumb luck. He’s seen much that I hope never to see and when he speaks of gratitude, his words carry a little different weight than most.

I think of him and of many others like him when I read today’s words from Psalm 107:

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,
and His mercy endures forever.
Let all those whom the Lord has redeemed proclaim
that he redeemed them from the hand of the foe.

There’s a natural tendency to spiritualize the psalmist’s word “redeemed” here, and certainly that applies. But there is every reason to believe that what he has in view is a literal salvation from political peril or physical affliction. In fact, he goes on to consider four types of people who know what it means to have suffered: those who “wandered in desert wastes” (v. 4) and “sat in darkness and deep gloom” (v. 10) as well as some who “were fools and took to rebellious ways” (v. 17) and, finally, the oddly Melvillian ones who “went down to the sea in ships” (v. 23).

The psalm is worth reading in its entirety because of the vivid description of each of these groups. In each case, the sufferer eventually “cries to the Lord” (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28), encounters God in their suffering, and is delivered in a poetic flourish. The response is joy and thanksgiving for a God who saves.

Some of us might find our own story in these verses. And those of us who don’t may have much to learn about gratitude from those who do.

Thanks be to God who was not above suffering and standing with others who suffered. May his Church have the strength and wisdom to do the same.

In Christ,

—Kyle