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Stone cottage, Iceland. Photo by Charles F. Stanley.
Daily Devotion

Near the Brokenhearted

What characterizes the good life is not the absence of hardship but, rather, the nearness of God in the midst of hardship.

Psalm 34:4-19

Today’s psalm was written by someone who had just come through real trouble. The psalmist remembers his fear, his cry, and God’s answer. And thankful for the relief of deliverance, he writes a song of praise that has steadied generations of believers.

What’s striking about Psalm 34 is how it redefines the good life. The world measures goodness by comfort and circumstance—what we have, what we’ve achieved, how things are going. The psalmist, however, has learned to gauge it differently. For him, the good life is one in which God is close by, even in fear, in sorrow, or when nothing is as we’d hoped.

The psalm contains one of Scripture’s tenderest promises: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (v. 18). Those aren’t words written by a person whose life is going well; instead, they describe suffering experienced by one who’s discovered that’s where the Lord meets us.

We might assume God’s presence, nearness, and faithfulness are blessings that shield us from adversity. But they’re more than that—they’re also what hold us through trouble. And so the psalmist invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (v. 8). Not someday, when everything is fixed, but now, no matter what you’re carrying.

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