Too Good to Be True? A Devotional on Psalm 103:1-7

From The One Year Book of Psalms, written by William J. Petersen and Randy Petersen

Psalm 103 sounds too good to be true. Surely God can forgive all my sins, but does he really "heal all my diseases"? I still catch an occasional sniffle, and I know devout believers who have died from their diseases. Where was the healing then? Yes, God fills my life with "good things", but why doesn't he take away the bad things?

Those are good questions, but we need to take a step back to get a better view. God does heal all our diseases, but not now necessarily. We are headed for a Kingdom, where there will be no more tears, no more sickness, and no more death. There will be final, complete healing for all. When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come", that's what we're looking forward to. When we ask God to heal a dying loved one, we're asking him to bring a piece of his future Kingdom into the present. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he asks us to wait.

Waiting for the Lord is a common theme in the Psalms (40:1) and other Scriptures. Those who wait patiently for God to act eventually find answers to their cries, but not always the answers they expect. They also find themselves strengthened by the Lord. Isaiah promised, "Those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31)