Psalms Part 10: Hope of the Faithful, Psalm 16

Once again, it’s been awhile since our last blog on Psalms. These are psalms that are meant to encourage, give us hope, discover healing, and understand Jesus more. Once again, these Psalms are ones that I found encouraging to navigating abuse and difficult situations, and my prayer is that they will comfort you and give you hope. If you’re new to this series, you can start here and check out the previous blogs later. Let’s get into it.

We’re looking at Psalm 16 and are reading verses 1-3. It says,

1Preserve me, O God for in You I put

my trust.

2O my soul, you have said to the LORD,

“You are my Lord,

My goodness is nothing apart from you.”

3As for the saints who are on the earth,

“They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”

Verse 2 is where the amazing stuff, at least for me, starts. To think that our goodness is nothing apart from God. That’s a deep thought. So many survivors feel shame, many blame themselves for so much, but the good news is, we are valuable. We are good. It’s thanks to God that we have goodness. It’s thanks to His Son that we find righteousness, and that we can start anew.

In verse 3, the Psalm continues and it reveals that the saints of the earth, that is, the ones who follow God and keep His commandments, are delighted in. This is how survivors can have hope. How we can experience transformation, from shame to sacredness, from a grotesque experience to a glorious existence. Jesus can restore us to the glory He desires us to have.

I encourage you to read the rest of the Psalm and meditate on it and I’ll see you in the next blog.