Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. Psalm 119:67
When we think that we are on the top of the world, things are good, life is happy, career is on the upswing, life is just going the way we intended it to be, all it could take is just one phone call to shatter our life. That’s how thin the line is between joy and sorrow. The word ‘astray’ simply means to go our own way and to do things that please us, and God does whatever it takes to get His attention. God whispers in our pleasure, but He shouts in our pain. Pain is God’s megaphone to arouse a sleeping world, that’s what psalmist meant in Psa. 119:67. Psalmist’s afflictions have led him back to the Lord, once he lived for himself, now he obeys ‘God’s Word’. Passing through the valley of sorrow was good for him because through it all he learned the ‘Word of God’. Our afflictions become the best schoolmasters to learn and to keep ‘God’s Word’. Through afflictions psalmist declares that everything God says is right, God is faithful even in our troubles, He is involved in everything that happens to us.
The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of afflictions. ~ Charles Spurgeon