I’ve mentioned before how some Scripture has become woven into the very fabric of who I am. Psalm 118:5 is one of those Scriptures.
I was 14 or 15, a new Christian, and my mom was battling cancer, which she would eventually lose to. At that age, I didn’t really understand relationships. And if we’re being honest, I still don’t know that much about them. But back then, I especially couldn’t understand how I was supposed to have a relationship with a God I couldn’t physically see.
I remember being at Prayer & Praise. It was a quiet, reverent gathering where we would worship together, pray together and spend moments in silence with God. During one of those quiet moments, I randomly opened my Bible and landed on Psalm 118:5:
“I cried out to the Lord and He answered me by setting me free.”
I don’t remember ever trying to memorize it. It just stayed.
And all these years later, knowing everything that teenage girl couldn’t possibly have known yet, one word still gets me: free.
At 14 or 15, I had no idea what freedom would eventually mean in my story. I didn’t know the things I would walk through, the things I would survive, the things I would have to unlearn or the ways God would eventually ask me to trust Him. And the truth is, I’m still learning what freedom looks like in different parts of my life. Maybe I always will be.
But more than 30 years later, I’m still carrying the words He gave that teenage girl during a quiet moment when she was simply trying to understand how to know a God she couldn’t see.
She opened her Bible and found Psalm 118:5. Somehow, she never forgot it.
“I cried out to the Lord and He answered me by setting me free.”
I understand that word differently now.
And I have a feeling I’m not finished learning what it means.