My Refuge

Saturday March 14, 2026

God is my refuge.  In our Psalm reading today, the first part is a very familiar passage.  The psalmist begins by testifying the God is good to Israel, to the pure in heart (Psalm 73:1).  But the psalmist then confesses that his feet almost slipped, he steps nearly went astray (v.2).  As your read the first half of the psalm, we see that the psalmist had started looking at others instead of looking at God.  The wicked seem to prosper and the psalmist, who was striving for goodness and righteousness, seemed to suffer.  This is an important lesson.  This remains true today.  At first glance, it can seem like the wicked get richer and those who are pure in heart suffer.  We often hear the question, “why do bad things happen to good people?”.  But the psalmist is reminded of something when he enters God’s sanctuary (v.17).  Does it cause you to wonder what took place in the sanctuary to bring this about?  Matthew Henry speculates, “he applied to his devotions, meditated upon the attributes of God, and the things revealed, which belong to us and to our children; he consulted the scriptures, and the lips of the priests who attended the sanctuary.”  Our attendance at church is not always about acquiring new information.  It is about being reminded.  Notice how the focus moves away from the wicked, and back on to where it should be, upon God.  The psalmist writes, “Who do I have in heaven but you?  And I desire nothing on earth but you” (v.25).  He concludes, “But as for me, God’s presence is my good.  I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all you do” (v.28).  If you look at the King James Version in verse 28, it says, “But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.”.  The word “trust” in that verse is translated from the Hebrew word “maḥăsê” and it means “refuge, shelter; from rain or storm, from danger”.  There are times when difficulties, storms, come our way.  Like Peter, it can be easy to take our eyes off the Savior in the storm, but when we get reoriented and see Him as He is, we can clearly see that He is our refuge.  Being a Christian does not mean we won’t have storms; we might actually appear to have more than others.  But what it means is that we have a refuge, a place to go when the storms come.