Psalms 136:17-26: in context

This psalm recounts God's great deeds, and after every single one it repeats the same refrain: for his loving kindness endures forever. He struck down kings, gave Israel their inheritance, and, the psalm says, remembered us in our low estate and delivered us from our adversaries, and gives food to every creature. And after each deed, the refrain returns, twenty-six times in all: for his steadfast love endures forever. The whole history of God's dealings is punctuated by this one truth: his love endures forever.

The repeated refrain drives home a single truth: God's steadfast love endures forever. After every deed the psalm recounts, from the great acts of deliverance to the tender remembering of his people in their low estate to the daily giving of food to all creatures, the same words return: his steadfast love endures forever. The repetition is the point; it hammers home, again and again, that behind all God's deeds, and running through all of history, is his enduring, unfailing, everlasting love. This is a truth to rest in, especially the assurance that God's love endures forever. Our own love, and the love of others, can fail, waver, grow cold, come to an end. But God's love endures forever; it does not fail, does not waver, does not come to an end. Whatever changes, whatever fails, whatever comes to an end, God's steadfast love endures. The LORD's loving kindnesses, Lamentations says, never cease; his compassions never fail; they are new every morning. God's love is not a passing thing but an enduring, everlasting reality that does not fail. And the psalm shows this love reaching us in our lowest place. Among the deeds it recounts is this: who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever. God's enduring love is not distant from us in our lowest, most helpless state; it remembers us there, reaches us there, delivers us there. His love does not fail when we are low, but endures, remembering us in our low estate. This is a comfort in every circumstance. Whatever we face, whatever changes or fails, God's steadfast love endures forever; it does not waver or come to an end; it remembers us in our low estate and endures through all. Nothing, Paul says, will be able to separate us from the love of God; his love is not something we can lose, for it endures forever. This calls us to rest in the enduring love of God. The psalm repeats, after every deed, that his steadfast love endures forever; and this is the truth to rest on: that God's love does not fail, does not waver, does not come to an end, but endures forever, remembering us even in our low estate. Whatever we face, whatever fails, we may rest on the love of God that endures forever, giving thanks, as the psalm ends, to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever, an unfailing, everlasting love that remembers us in our low estate and never comes to an end.

When my own love or the love of others fails, wavers, or comes to an end, and when I am in my lowest state, can the psalm's repeated refrain, that God's steadfast love endures forever, remembering us in our low estate, assure me that God's love does not fail or waver or come to an end but endures forever, reaching me even in my most helpless state, so that I rest on the enduring, unfailing love of God whatever I face, and give thanks to the God whose steadfast love endures forever?