HE is so very good to us!

Nehemiah 9:17-21

New Living Translation (NLT)

17 They refused to obey and did not remember the miracles you had done for them. Instead, they became stubborn and appointed a leader to take them back to their slavery in Egypt! But you are a God of forgiveness, gracious and merciful, slow to become angry, and rich in unfailing love. You did not abandon them, 18 even when they made an idol shaped like a calf and said, ‘This is your god who brought you out of Egypt!’ They committed terrible blasphemies.

19 “But in your great mercy you did not abandon them to die in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud still led them forward by day, and the pillar of fire showed them the way through the night. 20 You sent your good Spirit to instruct them, and you did not stop giving them manna from heaven or water for their thirst. 21 For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out, and their feet did not swell!

These verses are part of a prayer from the book of Nehemiah. After the wall was built,  the Israelites separated themselves from all the foreigners and confessed to the Lord their own sins and the sins of their ancestors. All of chapter 9 is great reading! I have pulled out these verses to particularly focus on the fact that the Lord never did leave them or forsake them despite all of their failures and short comings. It's easy for us to think that surely we have blown it with our Lord. Surely, this time we have messed up so badly that their can be no redemption. He must be done with us once and for all. NOT SO! He is all the things I Corinthians 13 describes as love. His mercies are new every morning. Maybe it is time for us to pray our own prayer like this one prayed by His people so long ago. Yes, we have made a mess of things, but He is faithful...yesterday, today, and forever!