Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
David wrote this in a wilderness, hiding, cut off from almost everything that made his life recognizable. That context matters, because the claim he makes isn't casual — it's tested. He's not saying steadfast love is nice to have alongside a good life. He's saying it's better than the life itself, spoken by someone who, at that moment, had very little life left to compare it to.
That's a bold trade to propose. Most of us build our sense of okay-ness out of circumstances — the job, the health, the relationships lining up. This verse suggests something underneath all of that, something that could be worth more than the things we usually measure a good life by.
You don't have to be in a wilderness to ask the question honestly: is there something that would still be worth praising even if the rest fell away? David's answer was yes. It's worth finding out whether that's just poetry, or something you could actually stand on.
If your sense of okay-ness has always depended on circumstances lining up, it's worth asking whether something steadier is actually available.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.