Love without an expiry

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.

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.