Listen to Devotion

[God will] give relief to you who are troubled.

Relief is big business. Walk up and down the aisles of your local pharmacy and read the labels. Relief from back pain. Relief from knee pain. Cold and flu relief. Relief from a toothache. Itch relief. Psoriasis relief. Earache relief. Headache relief. Sunburn relief. Foot pain relief. Relief from overworked muscles. All these types of relief are wonderful blessings from a gracious God.

But in our Bible reading today, the apostle Paul speaks to us about a kind of relief that’s on an entirely different plane. It is the relief that the Lord promises to give to us on the Last Day, the day of judgment. As our Savior-God watches over us, he never forgets that every moment of every day you, and I are laboring under the weight of living in a sinful, fallen creation. Day by day, we do battle. We battle Satan—both his temptations and his accusations. We battle temptations and distractions from the world. And we do battle with our own sinful selves.

All this he sees. All this he understands. And to encourage us to keep fighting the good fight of the faith, he promises to bring us sweet relief on the Last Day—a relief from all the troubles of this world, a relief beyond description.

Author J.R. Tolkien was a Christian, and he once remarked that there are Christian themes in his great work, The Lord of the Rings. In a closing scene to the 2003 film based on Tolkien’s book, we see two individuals. The first is Frodo, a person who has just finished an exhausting, perilous journey to help defeat a great evil. As Frodo awakens from a long, deep sleep, he sees Gandalf, an old, dear friend he’d thought was long dead. Frodo and Gandalf look at each other, smile, and begin to laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more. The laughter is not only of joy and reunion. It is the laughter of indescribable relief.

Such relief is what awaits us. And it’s the kind of relief that will never end.

Lord Jesus, because of you, a great, eternal relief awaits me. Move me never to forget this. Amen.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.