What does the church word “salvation” mean? Keep reading, but first… “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5).
Crain’s Chicago Business reports from Bloomberg News, “Majority of Americans in largest cities report COVID depression.” The article is based upon numbers from a U.S. Census survey taken between July 2 and July 7. Some stats: 62.3 percent in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California feel “down, depressed, or hopeless at least several days. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugarland, Texas 58.7 percent. New York-Newark-Jersey City, 58.2 percent. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Illinois: 53.9 percent. And the stats show younger people are “Young & Glum.” About 65 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds are “feeling down, depressed, or hopeless.” The numbers are only slightly smaller for 30- to 59-year-olds. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” Really?
The depressed psalmist is soul-searching. “My tears have been my food day and night” (verse 3). What was he referring to? Two-thirds down and depressed have a family member who has lost income, and that’s especially worrying younger people. Our psalmist also grieves losing the normal habits of faith life. “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival” (verse 4).
What strikes me about the psalm, and I hope you’ll appropriate the words to your own life, is the psalmist’s internal conversation, part of him depressed, the other part hoping in God for deliverance. Yes, there is some “where are You, God?” (verses 9-10) but his internal conversation is mostly, “God is good; put your hope in Him.” “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (verse 8). The conversation closes, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (verse 11).
“Salvation” for church people often means going to heaven when you die. That’s the ultimate grace from Jesus, but the word can mean deliverance in bad situations here-and-now. Jesus healed a sick woman and told her, “Your faith has made you well,” or literally, “Your faith has saved you” (Matthew 9:22). If we don’t exercise short-term hope in God for deliverance from our present trials, how real is our long-term hope?
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