Look at these wicked people-enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply. Psalm 73:12 NLT

We want to live in humble trust and obedience to God, but we are often plagued by the gnawing thought that God could make things easier for us. Or we would love to live an exciting Christian life without shame, trouble, and other constant pin-pricking stumbling-blocks. Then our confident faith could really shine for others to see and to follow; we could really be first-class witnesses for God. We could serve God as a great hero of faith in some dark corner of the world where our witness would shine brilliantly, drawing people to Jesus Christ.

God does have people like that - and you are one of them, right where you are, in your present situation. In whatever you are doing, and in whatever is happening to you, your faith can shine like a beacon. You may not be a Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or a Schweitzer of Africa, or a Billy Graham or Oswald Hoffmann of the USA, but you are a child of God. That is all you need to be.

The psalmist sees the people’s praises heaped on the wicked. ‘enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply.’ While everything goes right for them, he cries out: ‘Did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason? I get nothing but trouble all day long; every morning brings me pain.’

Thinking his way through this problem of how it could be that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, he found it ‘wearisome’ and troubling until he sought the right answer in God’s presence. Then he saw beyond the now, to ‘their end’. Now the unrighteous may be at ease, but at the end they are destroyed. Now life may be easy for them, but then it is lost. Now there may be no struggle, but finally there is damnation. By contrast, now the righteous have trouble, but then peace and glory; now life seems to be lost, but at the end it is saved eternally. Now there is a struggle, but at the end there is victory.

Do you still think everything is wrong for you, but it is right for the unrighteous? It only seems that way; in reality, it is the other way around. They are ‘in slippery paths’; you are standing on the Rock of Salvation. Let your life, no matter what its circumstances, be a beacon directing people to that sure foundation.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.