{This is my monthly book review.  Thanks for allowing me to share my thoughts.}

The Psalms.  I have camped there a time or two.

When I had so many questions and few answers, when I was heartbroken and full of tears, when life seemed unfair and out of control, I went to the Psalms.  My hurts, disappointments, and questions were echoed on the pages.  The writers of the Psalms had similar emotions as I during their trials.  They asked how long it would go on.  They looked at others whose lives seemed free of trouble and felt a bit envious. They experienced fear, discouragement, loneliness, and sadness.

They were just like me.

What I found in the writings there was the eventual turn from their troubles and questions to the only One with the answers.  They began to look to their great Lord and God.  It was then that He overshadowed all else with His steadfast love.

And they enter into worship.  Their journey became my journey.

Fans of Lauren Chandler will identify with and perhaps recognize a quote from her blog.  It introduces her book, Steadfast Love.

“Sometimes He wrings the worship from our hearts.”

And with that, she begins to live in Psalm 107.

Lauren says, “Psalm 107 is fashioned more like a modern worship song than most of the other palms in the book.  It has a cadence, a rhythm.  There’s a clear refrain and the verses are easily identified.  As a worship leader and songwriter, I was immediately drawn to it.”

Even those we call well-known and beautiful suffer hardship.  Steadfast Love is evidence of Lauren’s struggle through her husband’s diagnoses of a brain tumor and the days of surgery, healing, and learning a new normal.  The days of the unknown.

She wrestles with Psalm 107 and walks with her readers through its themes:

• The Call to Worship
• The Desert
• Chains
• Folly
• The Storm

She weaves many Bible stories into her own story as she tells how God was faithful in the past and thus would be faithful to us through His Steadfast Love.

When someone else has faced tragedy and come forth with an assurance of the steadfast love of God in the midst of it all, it helps me know my God will be the same to me.

After expounding about the woman at the well, Lauren says, “Jesus came to expose our thirst and to reveal God as the only fountain that will ever satisfy.”

Concerning God’s command for a Sabbath rest, she says, “The heart of the Sabbath is to cease striving and trust God’s work on our behalf. . . . Too many times I have attempted to build my own walls of protection and thus manufacture my own rest.”

In the chapter on Chains, Lauren asks questions:  “Does something ‘own’ you like it did me?  . . . Have you been hurt in a way that still affects how you live today?  Are you ‘hooked’ on someone or something?  Does the thought of losing whatever or whomever it is give you an anxiety attack? . . . If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you are being temporarily ‘owned’ by something other than Christ.”

In Steadfast Love, you will see your God, your Savior, the One who is changeless in an ever-changing world.  No one else can offer such faithfulness, such commitment, such eternal reward and promises that will not be forgotten.

God alone give steadfast love.

Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.  — Psalm 107:43 ESV

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NOTE:   I received a copy of the book Steadfast Love, provided by B&H Publishing, for an honest review.  The book was free.  The words are my very own.