“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! 
	His faithful love endures forever. 
Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! 
	Tell others he has redeemed you from your 
   enemies. 
For he has gathered the exiles from many lands, 
	from east and west, 
	from north and south.” 
Psalm 107:1-3 (NLT) 

Given the name and web address of this devotional site, it’s easy to assume that Psalm 107, or at least verse 2, is a passage of scripture that holds special meaning to me. Today, that’s an accurate assumption to make, but, sweet friend, it wasn’t always so.

In truth, though I grew up in church, I’m not sure I’d even read Psalm 107 in its entirety until last summer. In full transparency, at that time I didn’t even know where the phrase “Let the redeemed say so” came from in the Bible.

As you may have read in previous posts, in the summer of 2022 I left a full-time career in educational leadership to pursue a calling that God has placed on my life. I didn’t fully understand the call, I’m not sure I do even now to be honest, but I knew that He wanted me to do more than I had been doing with the writing abilities He had grown in me, so I was looking into a broader online platform than my personal Facebook page. I’d been pouring over names for a site, feeling that the step of faith wasn’t “official” without a name, and tossing them aside just as quickly. Eventually I decided I would think better if I went upstairs and made another cup of coffee.

On my way back downstairs, coffee in hand, I was struck by a line of music and I sang out loud, “so let the redeemed of the Lord say so!”.  I didn’t even know what song the line belonged to or how the rest of the song went; that one line was just stuck on loop in my head. Looking it up, I was led not to a song, but to Psalm 107:2 and that is how the site Psalm1072.com and the Facebook page, “Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So” were born. (If you’re curious though, I did also find the song later. It’s titled “Let the Redeemed” and was released by Josh Baldwin in 2019.)

Despite taking it on as the name of the platform for my devotional writing for the past year, I still didn’t really understand why God led me to that particular passage.

It has been a challenging year; a year of breaking and refining, a year of facing facts about myself and my life that I didn’t want to face, a year of learning that God can and will use whatever it takes to transform us from the inside out and accomplish His will for our lives. I’ve also learned that the process is…maybe not less difficult, but certainly less painful when we cooperate with God rather than argue with or avoid Him.

And then, yesterday, God woke me up at 4 am to show me Psalm 107 again in a little leatherbound book titled “Words of Wisdom” and to help me understand just why He called me to it in the first place.

Always in the past, my eyes have caught on verse two. On that morning though, my eyes caught on verse three:

“For he has gathered the exiles from many lands,

               from east and west,

               from north and south.”

I must have read verse three five or six times before moving on to the remainder of the psalm.

• He has gathered those who wandered, lost and homeless, in the wilderness (v.4).
• He has gathered those who sat imprisoned in chains of misery, in darkness and gloom (v.10).
• He has gathered those who were foolish and rebellious and suffered from their sins (v.17).
• He has gathered those who sought success in the waters of the world (v.23).
• He has gathered His people in desert places and changed them to rich fields and vineyards full of blessings (v.33-38).
• He has gathered up the poor, rescuing them from trouble and increasing their families (v.39-41).

Dear heart, are we not among those exiles?

Surely God has gathered us from a hundred different forms of wilderness, from depression and disease, from foolishness and rebellion, from vain strivings for earthly gain.

Time and again, has He not turned the deserts of our own making into fertile lands, has He not given us increase even as others would seek to diminish us?

Truly friends, over the past year my eyes have been opened to see the evidence of God’s faithful love in my life and in the lives of others.

As many times as God rescued the Israelite people of old, He has gathered me and gathered you from exile.

He has given me a voice to speak and to sing, and a mind to frame words and craft sentences.

He has given you a specific set of gifts for telling of His faithfulness as well.

Your calling may look differently than mine, but rest assured, He is calling you to “let the redeemed of the Lord say so”.

Beloved, the story of how God gathered you and from where may be personal and there may be details that in His wisdom God says to share only to a few, but be certain that the overall story of God’s faithfulness to you was never meant to be secret.

Speak out!

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell others how He has gathered us up from the hands of the enemy!

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