I See The Lord Now, Today

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

-Psalm 118:24

I see the Lord now, today.

Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day of deliverance.  Today is the day to trust God.

Today thank God.  Today trust God.  Today see God.

The Lord is here.  He is on the scene.  The Lord is working.

I see the Lord.  I see Him now.  I am glad, thankful and filled with joy about what I see God doing in my life and in those around me.

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  There is no better day than today, to begin praising God.  There is no better time to trust Him.

Today is a day to choose to worship Him.  Today we have the opportunity, like no other day, to express our thanks to God.

Today is a day to begin trusting God.  Today we can begin to see God as good.  Today is a new day.

Every day is a day with God.  Every day is a day for God.  Every day is a day God made that we can choose to rejoice and be glad in.

Today is a day when I will choose to see God's goodness.  Today is a day like no other day.  This day is a day to rejoice in because the Lord is my God.

I see the Lord as good and loving, kind and gracious, filled with mercy and faithfulness.  My heart is glad when I consider God.  Today I will be be filled with joy, because of the Lord.

I am no longer waiting on the Lord, but I now see the Lord and what the Lord has done already.  I am filled with thankfulness today.  I am going to live in today, knowing that God is at work, in me, around me, and in the lives of the people dear to me.

I see the Lord today and I am thankful.  Today is the day that I am letting joy flow.  I am no longer waiting for a breakthrough, waiting for the heavens to open, waiting for a miracle.  Instead, I see the Lord today, where I am.  And I see the Lord in all the people I know.

I am celebrating today.  The Lord is here.  The Lord is mine today.

The Lord has made my day.

I am thanking God and living in what He has done.  I will no longer discount today and short circuit my happiness.  I now see God and will live in today.

I see clearly now.  I see today as the day when the Lord has acted and intervened.  It may have happened yesterday, last week, last year or even many years ago; but I see what the Lord has done now, today.

A seed planted has sprung forth.  A plant planted has flowered.  A tree now is filled with abundant fruit.

I see it now.  I see the Lord today.

It did not happen today, but I see it today.  I am glad today.  I have been waiting for God while God has been waiting for me.

I have gotten up and gotten out and looked around and I now see all the good things.  My heart has changed and I am no longer pessimistic, cynical or negative.  I'm not judging things anymore.

Where I thought I saw 'impossible', I now see 'possible'.  On the hardest places, I now see the Lord and his encouragement.  I sense the Lord saying something like, "If I am with you, you will be ok".

I don't don't sense the Lord saying, "You can do it", but, "I will be with you".  I also have a strong, I mean overpowering sense that the Lord says, "I have been with you and I am with you today".

Don't misunderstand me,  I am not saying that I sense the Lord saying, "You can not do it", but I sense the Lord saying that He is with me and has been with me.

I saw one note on Psalm 118, that told me everything: "This is the psalm or "hymn" that Jesus likely sang after the Passover supper with his disciples, before making his way to Gethsemane and Calvary" (TPT, Psalms, p, 253).  

This is the whole backstory on Psalm 118, from Thomas Constable:

This is the last in this series of the Egyptian Hallel psalms (Pss. 113—118). It describes a festal procession to the temple to praise and sacrifice to the Lord. The historical background may be the dedication of the restored walls and gates of Jerusalem in Ezra and Nehemiah’s time, following the return from Babylonian captivity, in 444 B.C.[474] It contains elements of communal thanksgiving, individual thanksgiving, and liturgical psalms. The subject is God’s loyal love for His people. The situation behind it seems to be God’s restoration of the psalmist after a period of dishonor. This would have been a very appropriate psalm to sing during the Feast of Tabernacles as well as at Passover and Pentecost. The Lord Jesus and His disciples probably sang it together in the Upper Room at the end of the Lord’s Supper (cf. Matt. 26:30).

And this is what Derek Kidner wrote, in his commentary (pp. 412-13):

“As the final psalm of the ‘Egyptian Hallel’, sung to celebrate the Passover . . ., this psalm may have pictured to those who first sang it the rescue of Israel at the Exodus, and the eventual journey’s end at Mount Zion. But it was destined to be fulfilled more perfectly, as the echoes of it on Palm Sunday and in the Passion Week make clear to every reader of the Gospels.”

And, I am always interested in seeing the context of a verse.  This is the immediate context, of the previous two verses:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
This came from the Lord; it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Am here it is, with the preceding five verses, for more context:

Open the gates of righteousness for me;
I will enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous will enter through it.
I will give thanks to You because You have answered me and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
This came from the Lord; it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

This is a twenty-nine verse psalm.  It starts with the words,

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, His faithful love endures forever.  

And the center verse, verse fourteen, echoes the song of deliverance, from Exodus 15:

The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.

These two verses, one and fourteen, are what this psalm is about.  This is what rejoicing in the day that the Lord has made is all about.  Every day is the day of deliverance, with the Lord.

At every Passover, from the days of Moses, up to the night of the last supper; people worshipped the Lord for that day, the day, today: this day.  Every day is the day of deliverance, because that is what God is all about.

We live in the kingdom of God.  The kingdom is already and not yet.  We know this, and neither live in the triumphalism of an over realized eschatology, nor in a futurist theological mindset that says, "it's all future, so I will just wait".  Wait for the rapture or wait for God to do the next big thing.

Triumphalism and futurism are both errors and extremes, detrimental, unhealthy and dysfunctional (and fattening).  The kingdom life, the Jesus life, is lived in the already of the kingdom, while eagerly anticipating the not yet and seeing the not yet breaking into today, while still being held back as not (fully) yet.

This is the day that the Lord has made.  I will rejoice and be glad in it.

I see the Lord now.

Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day of deliverance.  Today is the day to trust God.

Today thank God.  Today trust God.  Today see God.

The Lord is here.  He is on the scene.  The Lord is working.

I see the Lord.  I see Him now.  I am glad, thankful and filled with joy about what I see God doing in my life and in those around me.