This Is the Day the LORD Has Made!

This Is the Day the LORD Has Made!

June 23, 2025

“This is the day the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). 

Dear Praying Friends: 

Does anyone else have trouble with Monday mornings?  

I do! Even though I observe a total rest on the Lord’s Day, it seems that Monday morning comes too soon and too hard. 

On the other hand, I look forward to writing to you to share what God has been teaching me earlier in the morning, gratitude for how he has answered your prayers, and requests for your continuing intercessions. 

Like all the psalms, only more clearly than most, Psalm 118 points to Christ from many directions. The crowds, including children, sang “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” on Palm Sunday. Jesus quoted from it during his last days on earth to demonstrate that his rejection by the Jewish leaders fulfills the prophecy, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22-23).  

Among many other sentences, however, I find the one I cited above especially stunning, for scholars believe that he sang this psalm on his way to the Garden of Gethsemane. 

How could he have sung, “This is the day that the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it,” knowing the unspeakable agony through which he was going to pass in the next twenty-four hours? 

Only, I think, because he truly believed that “The Lord is good! His steadfast love [mercy] endures forever.” “The LORD is for me; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” “The LORD is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation.” “I shall not die [eternally], but live, and declare the works of the LORD.” 

Thank you for praying last week. I missed work because of some virus but still wrote a bit more on Hebrews, my autobiography, and the book review. 

I also composed a short article on how God has helped me with fear and anxiety. You can find it here.

The publisher of my book on the China Inland Mission has finally been able to make it available on Amazon. You can find it here: The China Inland Mission: A Biographical History by G. Wright Doyle (Author), Cherry Zhong (Editor). 

“The LORD is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation” (Psalm 118:14). 

Yours in his steadfast love, 
Wright