Psalms 102

REFLECTIONS UPON PSALM CII.—To what low condition God reduces his church and people, for the exercise and trial of their grace, and for exciting their more importunate prayers! In darkness, vexation, and trouble, their days often past toward an end. Afflicted, dispirited, and pained, in their heart; and their body wasted to skin and bones: like owls and pelicans, they shun converse and comfort, and pine away in melancholy solitude. Often, like lonely sparrows, they are debarred from rest and sleep, and are deserted by friends, or avoid their company: are exposed to the reproach and fury of inveterate enemies—oppressed with grief—overwhelmed with a sense of God’s indignation, in his sudden and awful changing of their comforts into depths of misery, till near the grave and apparently near the pit! But great is the mercy that they have, notwithstanding, a God, a hearer of prayer, to whom they may complain; and a heart to pour out before him. Be the afflictions of the righteous as numerous as they will, the eternal Saviour has, and does, and will, deliver them out of them all. He has fixed the periods of his church’s deliverance, and issued forth promises ascertaining the same. While with deep concern his servants are affected with her ruinous case, and pour forth their importunate prayers, he will fly to her relief, to the conversion of multitudes and the terror of obstinate opposers. What he did in former times, in delivering from Babylon, in erecting the new testament church, and in destroying her Jewish and Heathen persecutors, encourages us to hope for more glorious deliverances from Aptichrist, and at last from the world that lieth in wickedness. And, whatever distresses befall the redeemed in their way to the heavenly mansions, Jesus’ eternity secures the perseverance and stability of his church, and of every true member of it. ● 7 D