Since Zach is more stable and experiencing less changes than when he was admitted to ICU, we have decided to decrease the frequency of the blogs to every other day, unless we have an important medical update to share urgently. So that means, don’t expect a blog tomorrow evening! We will post again on Tuesday. 🙂
Today’s devotional is another Alistair Begg devotional from A Call to Thanksgiving.
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The one hundredth psalm, with its call to worship, is one of the most well known in the Psalter. This familiarity can make it difficult for it to impact our hearts, though. In many ways, it’s easier to study passages that are less familiar because then we aren’t complacent in our study. We don’t assume that we already know them.
We should never feel so comfortable with the invitation to thanksgiving that we brush over it, as if it were only rhetoric. This psalm urges us into action! As God’s people, we are called to joyful worship and to thankful praise.
“Make a joyful noise” is an invitation to exuberant, vocal adoration. Such praise should not be treated as a forced obligation, as if we’ve swallowed something distinctly unpalatable. Instead, it should be a response to God’s activity in our lives, which leads us, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, to be “surprised by joy.” The opportunity for worship lifts the spirits of the genuine believer—and nobody is left out of the exhortation. God has made “all the earth” for the praise of His glorious grace.
The invitation also beckons us to “enter … his courts with praise.” Consider the experience of the commoner outside Buckingham Palace in London, where the best you can do is poke your nose through the railings and hope for a fleeting glimpse of royalty from afar. The gate is purposefully closed to protect the sovereign. But that is not our experience with the Father. Jesus’ death tore the temple curtain in two (Matthew 27:51) and opened a new way of living for us. Through Jesus we have gained access to the Father, and the gates are thrown wide open in welcome.
Our expressions of gratitude in joyful worship and thankful praise are not to be tied to our circumstances or feelings. The real foundation for thanksgiving is in knowing that the Lord is God and that He has invited us into His courts, to surround His throne as His subjects but also as His children. To recognize this is to have firm ground underfoot so that each of us can say with the psalmist:
“He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” (Psalm 40:2-3, ESV)
One day you will stand there, in His courts. Until then, each Sunday you can stand with others in your local church—an embassy of that heavenly throne room—and anticipate that future day by singing with joy to the Lord.
Today’s Updates:
Zach was quite restless this morning with a very high heart rate, but he eventually calmed down and got a few hours of rest during the rest of the day. We are thankful that Zach is able to rest and allow his body to recover and heart rate to decrease for a time. When Zach is more agitated, his eyes are open and he moves his limbs around significantly. He was grimacing with these movements more often today than yesterday. Zach sometimes will track people around the room with his eyes, which we are happy to see, but he does so inconsistently. He is still not responding to any commands. Please pray that God will heal Zach’s brain and allow him to regain awareness and responsiveness one day. Please also pray for patience for us in our journey with Zach.
The ultrasound yesterday evening showed a small clot by his PICC line in his left arm. Zach is receiving heparin now, and the doctor believes the heparin will be enough to resolve the clot so they will not have to remove his PICC.
Zach is still on a waiting list for his feet amputation, so we are not sure when he will have his surgery yet. The doctors would like to have the surgery completed in Winnipeg before wheels are set in motion for a transport to Calgary again. Please pray that his surgery will go well once he is able to go to the OR. Even though both chest tubes are looking better, they plan to keep both of them in until his transport to Calgary is complete to avoid his lungs collapsing again.
Since Zach did well with the deflated cuff yesterday, they put the cuff down again today. He coughed up a lot of secretions this morning again when they put the cuff down. Zach did well all day with the lowered cuff, but they plan to re-inflate the cuff this evening to give his lungs a break. Please pray that Zach’s lungs will continue to heal and improve.
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! … Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” (Psalm 100:1, 4)
