The Peace We Long For: Advent in Disorienting Times | Day 6

If the Lord had not been on our side.

Psalm 124

This refrain in the psalm took me back home. During a testimony service, as folks proclaim the ways God has kept them, this phrase would send the crowd into a rapturous frenzy. There would be shouts of praise, organ music laying folks in the aisle, and people running. All with the understanding that what we came through could’ve been worse…if the Lord had not been on our side.

Many of us know what it feels like when we get through something we thought would break us or was impossible. I reflect on my upbringing in a low-income family, one of 9 children, moving from house to hotel to house, where my parents worked hard to care for us. It was hard and intense at times.

I think about the people who supported us with the resources they had, food, clothes, and money from time to time. In many cases, families like mine were not supposed to make it through, but…If the Lord has not been on our side. It evokes the words of the poet Lucile Clifton, who has exhorted that

Something has tried to kill me and failed… if the Lord had not been on our side.

I invite you to think about the times throughout the year when it seemed people might have swallowed you alive, where the flood would have engulfed you. Think about the moments that once seemed impossible and dark.

Yet here YOU are.

In some cases, still waiting, and all you have is the belief that if God did it before, then God can do it again. You are still standing. 

If the Lord had not been on our side…

Prayer: God, thank you for being on our side, yesterday, today, and in the days to come. Amen.