Counting the Days Ahead
I tried to calculate what lay ahead.
One emergency surgery. One tumor removed, along with part of my colon. An ileostomy bag. Six months of chemotherapy. An ileostomy reversal. Five weeks of recovery. Another month and a half of radiation. When I added it all together, the result came to nearly three-fourths of 2025.
I ran those numbers one night while trying to fall asleep. Instead of resting, I drifted into worry. My mind raced ahead, tallying the burdens those nearly 275 days might carry—every procedure, each side effect, all the needles. I was attempting to shoulder tomorrow’s troubles all at once. Eventually, I remembered to pray, and the Lord graciously brought to mind verses I have often shared with others in seasons of suffering: “Blessed be the Lord who daily bears us up. God is our salvation. Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.” (Ps. 68:19–20)
Grace for One Day at a Time
The Lord daily bears us up—day by day, one day at a time.
Jesus said it this way: “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34). Each day’s shelves are stocked with plenty of burdens, Jesus says. No wonder I couldn’t sleep.
Through Psalm 68:19, Jesus has ministered to me with a precious truth, “Leave tomorrow’s burdens there; I will bear you up under them tomorrow. Leave every procedure, each side effect, and all those needles right where they are, on their own appointed days. I will bear you up when we get to them. I bear you up under your real burdens when they show up in real time, no matter what or how many they are.”
“But Jesus,” I argue, “there are so many real burdens coming my way. Will Your bearing match my burdens?”
In Hebrew, the first line of Psalm 68:20 literally reads, “Our God is a God of salvations.” Salvations, plural. Our God has an endless supply of salvations. The next line says it another way: “To God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.” While there are many ways to die, both literally and figuratively, our God has many more ways of escape. He has stocked His shelves with an endless supply of rescues from daily deaths.
That’s how Jesus can bear us up daily. The storehouses of His heart are fuller of salvations and deliverances than our days are filled with troubles and deaths. Jesus said it this way to the suffering apostle Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
It’s enough. Whatever this day’s burden, thorn, loss, or pain, the strong grace of the resurrected Jesus is enough. And as the weeping prophet Jeremiah experienced, “His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22–23). Your troubles can never drain Jesus dry. His supply of mercy and grace is fresh every morning and sufficient for every day.
Proof of His Burden-Bearing
So how can I know that Jesus is qualified to bear me up daily? The proof of His promise is found both in His character and in the burden He has already carried.
Psalm 68 crescendos with praise for the character of this burden-bearing God: “Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!” (Ps. 68:35). The Apostle Paul later quotes verse 18 and reveals that Psalm 68 ultimately points to Jesus (see Eph. 4:8). Jesus is the conquering King who has defeated Satan, sin, and death and now reigns in power with His Father by His Spirit. Our Jesus is the one who “gives power and strength to His people” to bear them up day by day.
Our hope in each day’s suffering is this: Jesus already carried our heaviest burdens, so He is uniquely qualified to bear us up under our comparatively “light and momentary afflictions” today (2 Cor. 4:17).
Jesus was grieved, stricken, smitten, afflicted, pierced, crushed, chastised, and wounded—all to bear us up under our greatest burden: the soul-crushing weight of guilt and the penalty of the never-ending death our sin deserves (Isa. 53:4–5). On the cross, Jesus bore the heaviest burden, the sharpest thorn, and the most excruciating relational loss there is to bear. His blood-stained cross and empty tomb are the proof we need to trust that He has already taken our greatest burden upon Himself.
If Jesus already bore our biggest burden, how will He not also be with us to bear us up under every smaller burden we will ever carry (see Rom. 8:31–32)? In his final sermon, Charles Spurgeon put it this way: “The heaviest end of the cross is ever on His shoulders. If He bids us carry a burden, He carries it also.”
Day by Day with Jesus
My heart’s desire is to turn each page of my appointed cancer calendar one day at a time—one procedure, side effect, and needle at a time—and to lean on Jesus as He bears me up under each one. “Day by day with Jesus” has become my prayer.
What can you do today when tomorrow’s worries weigh heavy on your heart? I have found the following practices helpful:
- Bless Jesus for being your burden-bearing God. That is what Psalm 68:19 calls us to do. Praying this prayer has sustained me: “Jesus, thank You for freeing me from my biggest burden by bearing the guilt of my sin on the cross. I trust that You will bear me up under every smaller burden I carry.”
- Ask Jesus to bear you up today: “Jesus, please bear me up through today’s pains, procedures, or problems.”
- Reach out to your community of burden-bearers. Be willing to be weak and ask for help and prayer. God’s people will answer His call to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). Their practical love will be an in-the-flesh reminder of the tender, strong, daily love of Jesus.
Day by day with Jesus—this is how the One who cares for us promises to carry us.