Psalms 145:1-16: in context

This psalm of praise exalts God's greatness, goodness, and mercy. The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness; he is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. And amid the praise comes a tender line about God's care for the struggling: the LORD upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down. The God of unsearchable greatness stoops to lift the fallen and the crushed.

Among the praises of God's greatness in this psalm is a line of great tenderness: the LORD upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down. The same God whose greatness is unsearchable, who reigns over an everlasting kingdom, stoops to lift the fallen and to raise up those bowed low. His greatness does not make him distant from the struggling; rather, it is joined to a tender care for exactly those who have fallen or are crushed beneath their burdens. He upholds all who fall; he raises all who are bowed down. There is comfort here for the fallen and the burdened. To be bowed down is to be bent low, crushed under a weight too heavy to carry, whether of grief, or failure, or hardship, or the burdens of life; and to fall is to collapse under it. And to such people, the bowed-down and the fallen, this psalm speaks God's tender care: he upholds them, raises them, lifts them up. God does not despise the fallen or turn from the crushed; he stoops to them, upholds them, raises them up. This is who God is: not only great and majestic, but tender toward the struggling, near to the fallen, lifting the bowed-down. If we are bowed low, crushed under a burden, fallen and unable to rise, this psalm holds out God's tender care: the LORD upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down. He is not far from us in our low place; he stoops to lift us. Come to me, Jesus said, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. The God of unsearchable greatness is the God who lifts the fallen and raises the crushed; and to be bowed down or fallen is not to be beyond his care but to be exactly where his tender lifting reaches. When we are crushed beneath a burden, bent low, unable to rise on our own, we may look to the God who upholds all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down, whose greatness stoops to lift the struggling, and who is near, not far, to those bent low.

When I am bowed low, crushed beneath a burden of grief, failure, or hardship, fallen and unable to rise on my own, do I imagine God is distant from me in my low place, or can I take hold of the tender promise that the LORD upholds all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down, whose unsearchable greatness stoops to lift the struggling and is near to those bent low?