Love without an expiry
Steadfast love forever
Imagine a song built around a refrain that simply will not quit. Verse after verse, Psalm 136 recites the whole sweep of God's story, the making of the heavens, the splitting of the sea, the long trek through the wilderness, the kings struck down, the rescue when it was needed most, the bread given to all flesh. And after every single line, without exception, the same six words come back like a drumbeat under the melody: his loving kindness endures forever. Twenty-six verses. Twenty-six times. A modern ear might call it repetitive and miss the entire point, because the repetition is the point. Whatever the verse carries, glory or terror, abundance or exile, the refrain does not flinch or fade: his loving kindness endures forever. Now lay your own life along that song. Your story has had its hard verses too, lines you would never have chosen, stanzas of loss and fear and failure. And the astonishing claim of this psalm is that the same refrain runs underneath every one of them, unbroken, unhurried, holding the whole song up from below.
“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his loving kindness endures forever.”
— The psalmist — Psalm 136:1 (WEB)
“For the LORD is good. His loving kindness endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations.”
What Cannot Be Shaken is the refrain under the whole story. Twenty-six verses of Psalm 136, twenty-six times the same line returns, because the steadfast love of God has no expiration and will outlast every stanza. Whatever verse your life is currently singing, hard or glad, the refrain holds beneath it. Lay your story along the psalm and listen for the drumbeat that does not quit.
Your life has had verses you would never have written, lines of loss and fear and the particular shame of having faltered. So hear the refrain that runs under all of them, and let it run under yours: his loving kindness endures forever. It did not expire the moment you failed. It did not quietly run out somewhere in your worst stretch, when you were too exhausted to notice it leaving, because it never left. There is no fine print in this love, no clause that voided the whole thing when you stopped performing well. Whatever the verse, the refrain holds. Read the present tense and hold onto it: His steadfast love is enduring toward you right now, this very hour, in the middle of whatever line you are living.
And it will still be enduring long after this hard stanza has passed into the next one, and the one after that. The love of God has no expiry date stamped anywhere on it. It is the drumbeat that does not stop, under every verse, all the way to the end of the song.
Whole movements of the Church have made God's love feel like a wage kept by performing, forfeitable the moment a person slips, and a watching world has heard the threat more clearly than the grace. Psalm 136 hammers the opposite twenty-six times: his loving kindness endures forever, through every verse of the story. As the rummage sale shakes Western and global Christianity and the Body sings through a hard stanza, the temptation is to read the shaking as love withdrawn, the covenant lapsed. It has not. The one Church across history has carried hard verses, persecutions, collapses, its own grievous failures, and under every one the same refrain held. The Body that lets that refrain set its rhythm is grounded in a love with no expiry, freed from earning what was never for sale.
Twenty-six times the line came back, and not one verse of the story, however dark, could interrupt it. The steadfast love of God carries no expiry date, no clause that lapsed when you faltered. It was enduring through your hardest stanza, it is enduring now, and it will be enduring when the song ends.
- Which hard verses of my own story have made me doubt the refrain was still playing underneath them?
- Where have I quietly assumed God's love came with fine print that my failures had voided?
- If the refrain is enduring toward me at this very hour, how would living that change the line I am singing now?
Lord, my story has hard verses, lines I would never have chosen, stanzas of loss and failure. Thank You that the refrain under all of them has not changed: Your loving kindness endures forever. It did not expire when I faltered or run out in my worst stretch. Your love is enduring toward me right now and will be enduring when this hard line has passed. Let me sing on, held by the drumbeat that does not quit. Amen.