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When I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling ...
What shall I return to the LORD
for all his bounty to me?
-- Psalm 116:6b-8, 12a

Theme: Exuberant thanks for recovery from illness

Outline
1-4 -- I love the Lord, who heard my prayer in my distress and gave me new life and hope.
5-11 -- Grateful meditation on this grace that was shown me.
12-19 -- What shall I render to the Lord? Public witness of my covenant loyalty by faithful worship with his people.

Notes
• Thanksgiving
• One of the Hallel Psalms (113-118).
• "Snares of death ... Sheol" (v. 3). Death like a hunter about to trap and seize his victim.
• "The simple" are those lacking intelligence or wisdom and experience and need God's special care to protect them (v. 6). (See Matthew 11:25.)
• "Return to your rest" (v. 7). According to Alan Richardson, rest has several meanings:
a. an end to struggle (in this case to get well, the refreshment of normal healthy life again);
b. peace, security;
c. satisfaction in attaining the goal; no more fruitless labor;
d. resting places, permanent dwellings (John 14:1); and
e. salvation in Christ (Hebrews 3:7--4:11).1
• "Everyone is a liar" = lost all faith in man (v. 11).
• Cup, a thanksgiving ritual (v. 13). (See 1 Corinthians 10:16.)
• "Faithful ones" (v. 15). The Hebrew word is related to chesed, God's covenant love, his "steadfast love." Here the word stands for the one who is the object of that love, one drawn by God into covenant relationship.

For Reflection
• We all have the "snares of death" awaiting us with its "pangs." We all have feared it.
• Verse 15 reminds us our dying and death are not a matter of indifference to God. Rather, it is "precious" (dear to him, or costly) because it was thought to break off relationship with him. (See Psalm 6:5.)
• In the light of Christ's resurrection and the gospel, our death has been costly to God in bringing about our complete redemption.
• Jesus shared the snares and pangs of death for us and with us, so that in dying and death we are not alone. He is with us. Nothing shall separate us from the LORD (Romans 8:38-39).

Prayer
O eternal and most glorious God ... You who assure us that precious in your sight is the death of your saints, enable us in life and death, seriously to consider the value, the price of a soul. It is precious, O Lord, because your image is stamped and imprinted upon it; precious, because the blood of your Son was paid for it; precious, because your blessed Spirit, the Holy Ghost works upon it, and tests it, by his various fires; and precious, because it is entered into your revenue, and made a part of your treasure.
-- John Donne (1572-1631)

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1. Alan Richardson, A Theological Wordbook of the Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. 192.