Who is wise? Let him give heed to these things,
And consider the lovingkindnesses of the LORD.
— Psalm 107:43
Every time we think of wisdom, we tend to associate it with age, with shrewd decision-making, or with the image of a scholar who has spent a lifetime in study. But the psalmist has a rather different take on what wisdom actually looks like.
What Wisdom Does
Back in Psalm 111:10, the psalmist had already established the foundation — the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And here in Psalm 107:43, he gives us a practical picture of what that wisdom looks like in action.
The wise person, he tells us, is one who considers. That word is important. To consider is a deliberate mental exercise — it is synonymous with words like discern and understand. It speaks of someone who does not simply pass through life reacting to one thing after another, but who intentionally creates space to think, to reflect, to look carefully at what is true and real.
And what does the wise person consider? The lovingkindnesses of the LORD.
The Richness of Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness is a rich and weighty word. In the Hebrew it carries within it a blend of love, mercy, and steadfast loyalty all woven together. In some translations it is simply rendered as the mercy of God. And it points to a quality of God that is not occasional or conditional — it is a settled, enduring characteristic of who He is.
Lamentations 3 captures it beautifully:
The LORD’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
— Lamentations 3:22-23
This is what the wise person makes time to think about. He creates space to consider how loving and gracious God is — to sit with the goodness of God and let it register deeply.
Too Busy to Consider
For many of us, this may seem either trivial or strangely impractical. And the reason is simply that we never really stop. We fill every gap of time with something. Even when we have nothing urgent to do, we reach for our phones and fill that space with scrolling, with notifications, with the constant low-level noise of distraction. Studies have shown that the average smartphone user checks their phone for notifications hundreds of times throughout the day. In conditions like these, doing what the psalmist describes — simply stopping to consider the lovingkindness of the Lord — becomes genuinely difficult.
But there is something deeper at work as well. When all we are doing is moving frantically from one thing to the next, there is no room to appreciate the remarkable things the Lord has blessed us with. There is no time to stop and observe what God is doing in His grand plan for our lives. There is no space to think about the goodness of God — because we are simply too busy.
Making Space to Consider
May we be a people who stops to consider the lovingkindness of the Lord. May we think through what Jesus has done for us on the cross — meditating on the gospel, on His life, death, and resurrection. May we think about the promised return of our Saviour, and sit with the great and precious promises of God.
May we be people who consider the lovingkindnesses of the Lord.
Amen.
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