Meditation on the Text of the Week

The Light of His Countenance

For His anger is but for a moment; His favour is for a lifetime;
Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning
Psalm 30:5

Our text portrays the inequality of God's wrath and favour. His anger is temporary, short-lived, soon over. His favour, however, is constant, abiding, and life-long. This means that for His people, the wrath of God occurs only within the context of an already established love and faithfulness. The love and faithfulness of God is the “deeper magic” of life.

The perfect analogy is the love of parents for a child. A parent's love is both faithful and constant. It undergirds the entire relationship with the child. It shapes the way the household operates. It sets the household schedules, its preoccupations, the meals, the budgets, and the activities. It is the love of parents for children which shapes the household as a child-centred environment. A parent's love for a child lasts the entire lifetime of the child—as long as the parent lives on the earth. Age does not diminish the love, it only changes its modes of expression.

It is interesting to find that as we have grown older and our children have become adults and parents in their own right, our thoughts and cares and concerns for our children (and now their spouses) have not lessened one wit. We find that our thoughts are constantly bent toward them, daily.

The favour of parents toward a child is for a lifetime. Consequently, the anger of parents towards their children is brief and fleeting. We refer here, of course, to the righteous anger of parents when they must chasten and discipline their children for their wrong doing. The ignominy of bad behaviour provokes the anger; faithfulness leads them to discipline the child. In this context, even the wrath becomes an expression of loyalty, love, and faithfulness.

But these realities of parental love are but a pale reflection of the intensity and the constancy of the love of our Father in heaven toward us. If we being evil are able to love our children in this way, how much more our Father, the Lord of glory.

This is why the people of God are characterised by a perpetual, irrepressible happiness. Clearly God's people suffer—often terribly so—in this life. Sometimes our suffering is due to our own stupid actions. We bear painful consequences of foolish behaviour. But it passes. God's people return again to have the light of God's countenance lifted up upon them.

As our text says, in the most moving of images: weeping may last for the night, but with the morning comes the shout of joy. Most of us have spent more than a few harrowing nights. We have experienced the truth of the proverb that it is darkest just before the dawn. But as the dawn has broken and the sun has risen, the pains and anxieties lessen, and one knows yet again that underneath are the everlasting arms. We know that God will again turn our mourning into dancing and our sackcloth into gladness (verse 11).

The opposite is too fearsome to contemplate. To sense that the entire cosmos is against you and lives in sleepless malice towards you is too great to bear. But that is the essence of the circumstance in which all Unbelievers live. Suppressing the truth about God, they have carelessly sought to give Him the flick. The Bible describes the condition of life of the Unbeliever as one upon whom the wrath of God abides. (John 3:36) Therefore all experiences of love and joy are fleeting, temporary and chimerical. Children will end up hating parents. Parents come to despise and detest their children. Hell is the state where each hates all and all hate each. The implacable wrath of the entire cosmos is known and experienced without end.

This is what our Saviour experienced on the Cross in His descent into Hell. It is from this that our Saviour came to deliver us. While there is still time, while it is still today, we call upon all men to repent and turn from their evil ways, and believe upon Him, for, as the apostle declared, He is the only Name on earth, given by God, amongst men, by which we must be saved.