Dear Friend,
This isn’t a letter I have scheduled for you. Those arrive on Wednesdays, and I wanted to touch base with you today. I just thought: somebody reading this needs a short word of encouragement today, not a long one. So here it is.
Some mornings you wake up already behind. The dishes from last night are still in the sink. The problem you fell asleep worrying about is still there when you open your eyes, unimproved by eight hours of sleep. Maybe it’s a diagnosis. Maybe it’s a marriage that’s tired. Maybe it’s just the ordinary weight of being a person in a body, in a family, in a world that doesn’t slow down to ask you how you’re really doing. Whatever it is, some days start with a deficit, and you spend the whole morning feeling like you’re already behind on grace before you’ve even had coffee.
I want to hand you one verse today, because it has carried me through more mornings than I can count, and I haven’t written about it yet.
It comes from the most unlikely book in the Bible to find comfort in. Lamentations is exactly what it sounds like — a funeral dirge for a city in ruins, written by a prophet who watched everything he loved get burned to the ground. Jeremiah isn’t wearing a façade of optimism. Nor is he a man who has it all together. He says plainly, “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is.” (Lamentations 3:17). And then, right there in the middle of the wreckage, he writes this:
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22–23)
Here’s what I ask you to notice: he doesn’t say God’s mercy is unlimited in some abstract, theoretical way. He says it’s new every morning. Not old mercy stretched thin. Not last month’s grace, rationed out until it runs dry. New. Every single morning, whether you deserved yesterday’s or not, whether you wasted it or hoarded it or never even noticed it was there — this morning’s mercy has already been set out for you, like manna in the wilderness, like the sun coming up whether you were ready for it or not.
That matters more than it sounds like it should, because most of us are carrying grief and guilt over things a long way back down the road — the year we lost, the relationship we trashed, the version of ourselves we thought we’d be by now. And we might even assume that God is keeping a running tab, waiting for us to finally store up enough righteous and faithful acts to earn a good day. But that’s not how mercy works. It isn’t a balance you build. It’s a gift you’re handed again at sunrise, whether your account from yesterday closed in the red or not.
You don’t need enough grace to get through the whole month. You don’t even need enough for the whole week. You need today’s, and today’s has already been given — the full measure, not a short stack.
I think this is one of the quieter kindnesses of God — that He doesn’t ask us to carry Thursday’s fear into Friday, or last year’s failures into this one. He pours out new mercy every single morning, the way a good father doesn’t bring up last week’s mistakes at breakfast. Israel couldn’t stockpile manna either, remember — try to save it overnight and it spoiled. God wanted them coming back every morning, empty-handed, trusting Him again. Maybe that’s not a flaw in the design. Maybe that’s the whole point. :)
So if you woke up today already feeling behind — behind on rest, behind on patience, behind on whatever it is you think you should have figured out by now — I don’t have a five-step plan for you. I just have this: His mercies are new this morning. Not because you earned them. Because He is faithful, and faithfulness like that doesn’t run on your performance.
Great is His faithfulness. Even today. Especially today.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
Needed that today, thanks:)