When the Body Fails

Psalmist Asaph wrote this verse when his body and his courage had both given out at once. He had watched people who ignored God prosper. He had kept his hands clean and his heart pure and had nothing to show for it but exhaustion. His flesh failed him. His heart failed him. He stood in the temple and nearly said the whole thing out loud, nearly announced that faithfulness was pointless. But he stopped himself, because speaking it would have betrayed everyone who had trusted God before him.

The failure Asaph names is not theoretical. Flesh fails when you cannot get out of bed, when the diagnosis comes back, when the strength you had yesterday is just gone. Heart fails when you cannot make yourself care anymore, when the prayer dies in your throat, when you look at the future and feel nothing. Asaph does not pretend this is not happening. He does not say his flesh and heart might fail someday if he is not careful. He says they may fail, and then he says something else entirely.

God is the strength of his heart. Not a supplement to his own strength, not a backup plan for when his runs out. God is the strength itself. And God is his portion forever. A portion is what you receive, what is allotted to you, what you get to keep. Asaph's flesh will fail. His heart will fail. But his portion does not depend on either one holding up. He has God, and God does not give out.