New Mornings
There's a verse in the Bible that celebrates a truth I have come to treasure: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).
New mercies every morning.
As the sun rises, we rise, with another chance to encounter, all over again, the mercy of our Lord. No matter how we ended yesterday, we begin today with an invitation, welcoming us to delight in the fullness and presence of a merciful, loving, faithful God.
Families are fickle. Our character, volatile. We never know what we're going to get from one another. But God is not this way. He is steady. He is dependable. He is constant. He doesn't choose some mornings to be merciful and faithful and loving. This is his character. This is who he is, and so every morning finds him loving and faithful and merciful.
Every morning, God is who we need the most, giving what we need the most.
Every morning.
Every single day.
We wake up, in desperate need of mercy, and, in the Lord, we find mercy.
We wake up, in desperate need of faithfulness, and, in the Lord, we find that "Great is his faithfulness."
We wake up, in desperate need of love, and, in the Lord, we find steadfast love.
I've yet to meet a family that doesn't share this desperation. I've met families that are unaware of their desperation for all of this, but the more they talk about their lives, their desires, their frustrations, their hopes, and their homes, the more clear it is that their greatest need is the Lord and the gifts he brings with every new morning.
I make mistakes daily. As a husband, as a father, I get it wrong more often than not. Far too frequently, my days would play better as a blooper reel than a highlight reel. The chapter closes, I go to sleep, only to wake up just in time to see that a new chapter has begun. The author of the story is already writing the first lines, and these sentences are filled with words like, "new," "mercy," "never ceases," "steadfast love," and "faithfulness."
Jonathan Williams is the founder of Gospel Family Ministries and the Senior Pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church, a multi-ethnic church of 44 nations located in Houston, TX. He and his wife are blessed with three wonderful children.
