Read Psalm 107:16-21 

16 for he breaks down gates of bronze
       and cuts through bars of iron.

 17 Some became fools through their rebellious ways
       and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.

 18 They loathed all food
       and drew near the gates of death.

 19 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
       and he saved them from their distress.

 20 He sent forth his word and healed them;
       he rescued them from the grave.

 21 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love
       and his wonderful deeds for men.

Psalm 107 contains four vivid pictures of sin and salvation. In today’s passage, the psalmist likens sin to a disease and God’s Word to medicine: “Fools, because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, were afflicted…. He sent His word and healed them” (vv. 17,20). 

Disease starts secretly. It enters your body secretly and grows secretly. Then it begins to sap your strength, rob your appetite and weaken you. Unless something is done, it will kill you. 

So it is with sin. People play with sin without realizing its danger. That’s like treating cancer or AIDS lightly. Sin brings death. To be healed, we need the medicine of God’s Word. 

Scripture can heal the brokenhearted. It can heal those who have been ravaged by sin, who have rebelled against the Lord. But the sick have to reach out by faith and admit their need (Matt. 9:12). We have to admit that we can’t help ourselves and that no one else can help us. 

Medicine can be expensive and even hard to obtain sometimes. But the Word of God is free and available. It can cure every malady of the soul. 

* * *Perhaps your life has been ravaged by sin and you have yet to admit your need and reach out to the Lord for help. Never delay treatment for your soul. Read the Word of God and ask the Holy Spirit to apply its truths to your heart.

Sitting one still and sunny afternoon in a tiny chapel on an island in the South, I thought I heard someone enter. A young woman was weeping quietly. After a little time I asked if I could help. She confided her fears for the future–what if her husband should die? Or one of her children? What if money ran out?

All our fears represent in some form, I believe, the fear of death, common to all of us. But is it our business to pry into what may happen tomorrow? It is a difficult and painful exercise which saps the strength and uses up the time given us today. Once we give ourselves up to God, shall we attempt to get hold of what can never belong to us–tomorrow? Our lives are His, our times in His hand, He is Lord over what wil1 happen, never mind what may happen. When we prayed “Thy will be done,” did we suppose He did not hear us? He heard indeed, and daily makes our business His and partakes of our lives. If my life is once surrendered, all is well. Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril in His hand but would be safer in mine!

Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future, I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”–and the work thereof. The evil is not a part of the yoke Jesus asks us to take. Our work is, and He takes that yoke with us. I will overextend myself if I assume anything more.

God chains the dog till night; wilt loose the chain
And wake thy sorrow?
Wilt thou forestall it, and now grieve tomorrow,
And then again
Grieve over freshly all thy pain?
Either grief will not come, or if it must,
Do not forecast;
And while it cometh, it is almost past.
Away, distrust;
My God hath promis’d; He is just.
–George Herbert, “The Discharge”