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"Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken."
- Psalm 55:22
When I went by the church yesterday to lead my Zoom Pastors' Bible Study, I checked the church office for mail. I found a piece of paper in my mailbox with a handwritten note from one of our church members containing the Bible verse above. The person ended the note with "Have a good day" and signed her name. It was nice to get such words of encouragement unexpectedly. My sense is that many of us continue to feel shaken by the daily changing events in our lives. I know I have. So, the reminder from the book of Psalms, to cast our cares on the Lord with the promise that God will sustain us when we feel shaken by the events of life, was both appreciated and needed.
You may remember that the word "encourage" comes from two French words: en- which means "make" or "put in" and corage which comes from the word for "heart" - coeur. One could say that enragement is really en-heartment, or giving someone heart. Some of us are really good at encouraging, while others of us have to work at it. Whether encouragement come to us naturally or because we are gifted in that way (Paul lists it as one of the spiritual gifts in Romans 12:8), or it something we have to make a deliberate effort at doing-we can all chose to try and encourage each other more often.
In this pandemic storm, we especially need to lean into offering words of encouragement because all of us feel "shaken" at the present time. Yet I believe that one of the main ways God sustains us during these times is through the encouragement we can offer one another as sisters and brothers in Christ. Maybe it will come in a personal note and a Bible verse, like the one I mentioned above. Find your own way to be an encourager today!
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