Precious Before Him

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 195, Precious Before Him.

"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." Psalm 116:15.

Let that word settle slowly, because it touches a place we tend to avoid.

Psalm 116 is written by someone who came close to death — the psalm's own words say "the cords of death encompassed me." And that person was rescued. It is from that place — of someone who looked death in the face and was saved — that this reflection is born: precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.

Notice the word chosen: precious. Not trivial. Not disposable. Not just another gear turning in the machinery of the world. Precious — the same word you would use for something of the highest value, something carefully kept, something you would never let slip away through carelessness. That is how God views the moment when one of His faithful ones departs this life.

And notice too: it is His saints. Not distant strangers, not anonymous lives with no connection to the throne. These are people who belong to Him — who walked with Him, who trusted Him, who were His to the very end. And the verse tells us something deeply comforting: the departure of one who is His never goes unnoticed. It never happens outside His gaze.

That means the death of a faithful believer is not some cosmic accident, some detail lost among billions of lives. It is attended to. It is watched over with fatherly care. God does not look away in the moment when one of His own crosses that threshold. He is there — attentive, present, handling that moment with the weight it deserves.

And if you're hearing this today carrying the memory of someone you lost — a father, a mother, a brother or sister in the faith, a friend who walked with God to their last breath — I want you to know: that departure was not ignored. It was not treated with indifference. It was seen, it was felt, it was kept as something precious before the throne. The grief you carry is real, but it is not solitary — God saw it too, and God also treasured that life until its very end.

This changes how we look at the death of someone walking with Christ. It is not the end of a story that no longer mattered. It is the arrival of someone precious into the presence of the One who always treasured them. And there is a deep comfort in that — not because the pain of loss disappears, but because it comes with a certainty: nothing that happened to that life escaped God's care.

So today, before breakfast, I want to invite you to do something specific. Remember one faithful person who has already passed — someone who walked with God and whom you still carry in memory. And thank God out loud for that life. Not just for the missing them — for the life itself, for what it meant, recognizing that it was, and still is, precious in His sight.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.