It’s true the Lord rescued them from their distress, but He actually rescued them by their distress, too.
It’s Psalm 107 in crisis! We need a wilderness extraction (vv 4-9), a jail break (vv 10-16), a medical miracle (vv 17-22), and a rescue at sea (vv 23-32). All in a day’s work for the Lord! Do you have any idea how many millions of people need divine intervention at this very moment? I don’t, and if it weren’t for Psalm 107, I might never think about it. At first, the list of rescuees seems to be quite random. Why did one ship have smooth sailing and the other hit the typhoon? One man smoked and drank for years, and lived to tell about it. The young fellow who did his best to stay healthy ended up on life support. But it may not be as haphazard as it first seems, “For He commands and raises the stormy wind, which lifts up the waves of the sea” (v 25). In fact, the Lord is quite busy in the Crisis Development department. “He turns rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground” (v 33). The dear man in Scene 1 was lost in a wilderness of God’s making! Or, to be more correct, it was of his own making, since it was turned to “barrenness, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it” (v 34). Do you see how this works? It should be obvious that people wouldn’t “[cry] out to the Lord in their trouble” (vv 6, 13, 19, 28) if they weren’t in trouble! Their troubles are like sheep dogs nipping at their heels to bring them to the Good Shepherd. And when they do cry out to Him, “He turns a wilderness into pools of water, and dry land into watersprings….that they may yield a fruitful harvest” (vv 35, 37). How many will yet “give thanks to the Lord for His goodness” (vv 8, 15, 21, 31), which, when it first hit, looked like the very opposite? Yes, as William Cowper wrote, “Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”