God is still faithful — even now

We’ve seen enough in St. Louis to forget how to breathe — protests and politics, grocery bills and gunfire, ICE raids and school closures. But if you can still catch your breath, you’ve got a reason to praise.

“Let everything that has breath,” the Psalmist said. That means you. That means us. Because God is faithful. 

Psalm 89 says, “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever.” That’s not just a lyric. It’s a lifestyle. When the city feels divided and our systems fail, faithfulness reminds us that God never has. We don’t shout today because life is easy — we shout because we’ve survived what should’ve destroyed us.

But there’s a warning in the Word. God’s promise to David wasn’t just for him — it was for his descendants. His children’s children. That means legacy matters.

And right now, in St. Louis, we’re in danger of cutting off our own bloodline. We’ve become gatekeepers instead of door-openers. We’ve traded mentorship for memory, heritage for hierarchy. We celebrate what was and forget to invest in what’s coming next.

The promise is generational — but if we keep stifling our youth, defaulting to elder worship and clinging to tradition over transformation, we’ll miss what God wants to do through them. 

Some doors in this city are blocked. And when young people take the roof off — when they stream church, question the system and find God in the digital wilderness — maybe they’re not rebelling. Maybe they’re just reaching.

Faithfulness doesn’t fear change. Faithfulness builds bridges. Faithfulness says: “I see you in the future, and you look better than you look right now.”

Still, the numbers don’t lie. Churches are closing. Pew Research says nearly 30% of Americans now claim no religious affiliation. Attendance is dropping. Aging buildings, aging leadership and aging visions are collapsing under their own weight.

But the Gospel never depended on a building. “Upon this rock,” Jesus said, “I will build my church — and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

God’s faithfulness doesn’t compare. It doesn’t depend on our circumstances or our connections. It’s not canceled by corruption, inflation or war. Babylon may take the city, but it cannot take the covenant.

St. Louis knows this story. We’ve been through Ferguson. Through pandemics. Through disinvestment and displacement. Through tornados. Through grief that words can’t hold. Yet, through every valley, God has remained faithful.

So, take your eyes off the chaos for a moment. Lift them higher. Our help doesn’t come from Washington or Jefferson City or City Hall. It comes from the Lord — the same God who turns test into testimony, chaos into creation, sorrow into strength.

The Psalmist ends with a declaration, not a doubt: “Blessed be the Lord forever.” So even here, even now — in this city, in this season — we can still say: God is faithful.

The Rev. Dr. Anthony L. Riley is senior pastor of Central Baptist Church of St. Louis, the second-oldest Black church in St. Louis.