The word is not explicitly used here, but what is being spoken of could be best characterized as “endurance”. This is a highly touted quality throughout the whole of God’s Word but given little attention in an age when technology and services are expected to be delivered instamatically. God provides no guarantees that there will never be problems, trials, or hardships in life, only that He will be faithful to see us through them.

The Lord is alternatively described here during times of distress as our help, as holding us up, as providing consolation. The psalmist does not praise Him for removing the source of conflict or instantly abolishing it, but experiencing something enabling him to see beyond the mere circumstances so as to be assured that God is still in control. He recognizes that life’s experiences have the potential to not just overwhelm but overcome. God sustaining Him through these things is characterized as “lovingkindness“, the most prolific Old Testament equivalent of “grace”.

It’s not wrong to pray for a burden to be removed or a difficulty to be remedied, but so often the only form our prayers take is a plea for conditions to be supernaturally dismissed. As with all tests of faith, such petitions should be accompanied with a request for endurance in the knowledge of God’s sovereign will at work. I suspect that faith exercised in the rare occasions when God responds and supernaturally changes the conditions is developed along the way during far more frequent times of simple endurance and trust we are still in His care._††_†

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