'New Mercy, New Song'

Jeremiah watched Jerusalem burn. The walls were broken, the temple was gone, and everything he had warned his people about for decades had finally arrived. Sitting in that wreckage, he wrote some of the most quoted words in the Old Testament: "Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). He wasn't describing a good season. He was describing the worst day of his life, and finding, somehow, a mercy in it that hadn't been there the day before.

The psalmist behind Psalm 98 was reaching for the same idea with a melody attached. "Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him" (Psalm 98:1). In Hebrew poetry, "new song" is never decorative. Every time that exact phrase shows up in the Psalms, it's attached to something that had just happened — an event large enough that none of the old songs had room for it. That's Jeremiah's new mercy with music underneath it: a new mercy calls for a new song, because the old ones weren't written for what God just did.

You may not be sitting in Jerusalem's wreckage, but you know what it is to need something today that yesterday couldn't supply — the phone call that went differently than you feared, the diagnosis that came back better than expected, the apology you weren't sure you'd get. That's not a rerun of an old blessing. That's God doing something today for you.

God's presence inspires a new song. His mercies are new every morning. What has God done for you this week that deserves a song you haven't sung yet?

Blessings,

Jonathan