Light in the Tunnel

The whole of Psalm 119 is focussed on just one thing: the word of God. To the Hebrew mind, this verse would have been very special. It’s the first of a group of verses all beginning with the letter zayin (English ‘z’) which is the seventh letter of the alphabet. Seven represented completion. Zayin also, because of its shape, suggested a sword. And the word of God is the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). To cap it all, this is the forty-ninth verse – seven times seven: God’s Word in all its fulness.

Psalm 119 has about a dozen different Hebrew words for the word of God. The one here (dabar) is the ‘umbrella word’– it covers everything. David is thinking about all that God has ever spoken into his life. He is constantly speaking His word into our lives: through Scripture, through sermons, through Christian books, prophetic words, dreams, and things that resonate in our spirit.

Hope is one of the most basic of human needs. For many people, ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ is the best they have to get them through difficult times. The trouble is that there’s always the fear that this ‘light’ is not real, or that we’ll never manage to reach it. But a Christian’s hope isn’t ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, it’s much better than that: it’s light in the here and now – in the tunnel. It’s the faithfulness of God. It’s the utter reliability of a God who is always true to His word that is a light on our path (Psalm 119:105).

Why does David ask God to ‘remember’ His word? Had He forgotten it? Of course not!

You’ll often find, in the Bible, people making declarations of truth. A powerful example is in 2 Chronicles 20. Judah was being invaded by a vast army. They were hugely outnumbered. Instead of attacking them, `Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendour of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever”` (2 Chronicles 20:20-21). What happened next? Overwhelming victory!

They weren’t looking for ‘light at the end of the tunnel. They were walking in the light of God’s presence, declaring truths revealed in His Word, both written and prophetic: the splendour of his holiness and His eternal covenant love. In this sense, they were asking God to ‘remember the word spoken’ to them and, in doing so, reminding themselves of it as they marched through ‘the tunnel’, declaring that their hope rested in Him.

Whatever the challenges and difficulties we face today, God is utterly faithful. As we declare His word spoken to us in so many different ways, we’ll find our spirit rising up within us and hope with it. That puts the enemy, who would rob us of hope, to flight.