You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Ps. 45:7)
My wedding day was the end of months of deep pain. My husband and I were engaged long distance and that brought about quite a bit of hurt. Anxious thoughts and bitterness became the central themes of our wedding as we planned. Tensions were high. Not just between Sean and me, but between our families and our friends. The day we moved into our first house will forever be marked with fighting, hurt, and thoughts of giving it all up. In that, I learned a lot about myself. More importantly, I learned a lot about who God is.
Reading through this psalm, it has an overall tone of victory. Written as a wedding song, it is easy to see the allusion to Christ coming for his bride, although this was written long before anyone knew what was to come. And still there is that victory, that sense of celebration, that joy. We know now that Christ’s victory came out of deep darkness. Darkness that made way for joy like we would never know without him.
And although I remember my wedding day for a lot of obvious reasons, I remember breaking through the darkness to a joy I didn’t think was possible. I remember feeling so much joy that everything else faded away. Jesus desires to give us that joy every moment, because his has always been the victory.
Find joy in Christ right where you are.
Callie Kemmerer is a wife, fur mama, alumni of Kingswood University, and lover of Jesus who is striving after God’s heart and will each day.
© 2020 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
