Psalm 98 opens with a command that sounds almost too easy: "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."
This is a victory hymn, and its language is loaded. The right hand and the holy arm are Exodus words โ the arm that stretched out over the sea and brought a slave people through on dry ground. The psalmist is not being vague about blessings. He is pointing at specific, historical, undeniable acts of God. And he widens the frame: the LORD has made his salvation known, has revealed his righteousness to the nations, has remembered his love and faithfulness to his people. By verse four the whole earth is shouting, the sea is roaring, the rivers are clapping their hands.
Notice what makes the song new. Not that God has changed, but that a fresh act of mercy calls for a fresh response. Last season's song will not carry this season's mercy. Praise here is an act of accurate description โ saying what is actually true about God, out loud, on purpose.
And notice what the psalm does not say. It does not say sing because everything is pleasant. The psalmist is not asking anyone to pretend. He is asking people who have known trouble to describe the whole of their situation truthfully, which includes God. Gratitude is not closing your eyes to the loss. It is refusing to let the loss be the only true thing about your life.
Adult life pushes hard the other way. We keep a running ledger of what is missing, and we compare it to everyone else's highlight reel. A salary that felt sufficient until a colleague mentioned theirs. A body that worked fine until a scan said otherwise. Scarcity becomes the default lens, and after enough years of it, we stop seeing anything else.
Henry's four lines are not doctrine. They are one man's honest inventory, written in the wrong moment. But they show the shape of the discipline: name what is actually there. Not "my family," but something that happened this week. Not "my job," but the specific thing that went right on Tuesday. And for the Christian, the psalm's marvels come to a point at a cross, where the holy arm worked salvation at real cost. That subject never runs out.
๐Gratitude
Marvelous Things, Hidden in Plain Sight
Gratitude is not the absence of loss; it is a new song sung in its presence.
October 25, 20265 min readNIV
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.
โ Psalm 98:1 (NIV)
Marvelous things
Today's Story
๐True Story
When the thieves had gone and the street had gone quiet again, Matthew Henry did something that has outlasted the robbery itself. He wrote out his reasons to remain thankful.
That is the whole anecdote, and it is worth sitting with. Henry was an English nonconformist minister, a man whose life was spent in pulpits and in the slow, unglamorous labour of exposition. His Exposition of the Old and New Testament kept him at a desk with the text for years, verse after verse, and it is by that work โ not by the robbery โ that the church has known him for three centuries. The ministry is documented. The commentary is documented. The man is not a legend.
The list is something else. The familiar story says that, having been robbed, he recorded four reasons for gratitude: that he had not been robbed before; that though his money was taken, his life was spared; that though what was taken was all he had on him, it was not much; and that he was the one robbed, and not the robber.
It should be said plainly that this account comes to us as a tradition rather than a verified entry from his diary. The wording is not securely established, and no contemporary record fixes it. It has endured because it is the kind of thing a man steeped in the Psalms might well have written โ and because what it does is so recognisably difficult.
Look at what the list is not. It is not a denial. The theft happened, the loss was real, and nothing in the story pretends otherwise. Nor is it a bargain or a pep talk. It is simply a man choosing, in the aftermath, to give an account of what remained rather than an account of what was gone. Four small, stubborn facts, set down beside a genuine wrong.
And there is that fourth line, the strangest and the best: he was not the robber. He had lost something; he had not become someone who takes. For a man who spent his life teaching people to sing to the Lord, that distinction was not a small thing. It meant his soul was still his to give.
Source citation: Matthew Henry: Thankful Anyway (CT Pastors) / https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/preaching/sermon-illustrations/matthew-henry-thankful-anyway/
Reflection
Think About It
โข Where in your life have you been keeping a careful account of what is missing, while leaving what remains unrecorded? โข Psalm 98 says God's "right hand and holy arm" have worked salvation. What specific, concrete thing could you name today as evidence of that in your own history? โข Henry's fourth reason was that he was not the robber. What does it mean for you that, whatever has been taken from you, your soul is still yours to give?
Prayer
His right hand and holy arm have worked salvation. His right hand and holy arm have worked salvation. Lord, open my eyes to the marvelous things I have stopped seeing, and teach my mouth a new song today. Amen.
Live It Out
Write a thank-you note today to someone you would not normally thank โ the cleaner who does the floors before you arrive, the bus driver who waits, an old teacher whose name you still remember. Be specific about what they did. Then send it, today, before the intention cools.