Daily Burdens

Psalm 68:19 Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

I don’t know about you, but so many people feel like they are alone, like no one really knows them, understands them. In fact, loneliness has such a negative effect on health, that it has been studied. Loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Start the coughing now!

Loneliness is easy to fix. Just get around people and get them talking. Add some food and a little levity, and you have a cure. Do this repeatedly over a long time. Solved!

So why is it that so many people still feel alone? Part of it is the structure of Western society as a whole. We have been told to be self-sufficient, code for alone! We don’t thrive on independence, we thrive on interdependence, leaning to to support each other.

Our text tells us that the LORD bears our burdens daily. If He is carrying them, why do they still feel so heavy? What is going on in this Psalm that helps the writer have a sense that his burden is being lifted?

Well, this Psalm, if you take time to read it, is about a corporate worship experience. It is about masses of people traveling together to Jerusalem, to the Temple of the LORD. They are there singing, confessing, offering prescribed rituals to restore relationships. They are together.

There is something about gathering together for corporate worship that isn’t like anything else we can experience, when it is the way it should be. But too often our worship experiences get sidetracked by personality and preference. We don’t like the person up front, or they aren’t doing it the way we would like them to do it.

But when you find the right mix, it can be life-transformational. There is a connection between people and their Creator that can’t be experienced over Zoom. When everyone is singing in unison, all breathing in rhythm, all focused on someone other than themselves, something can happen.

It is those moments when the Creator of the Universe shows up personally. He inhabits his people. Immanuel. And then we know that He is there to bear our burdens. We are all in this together.