1 I love you, Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and I have been saved from my enemies.
4 The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
5 The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
7 The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
8 Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
9 He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
10 He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
13 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
14 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
15 The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, Lord,
at the blast of breath from your nostrils.
16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.
20 The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the Lord;
I am not guilty of turning from my God.
22 All his laws are before me;
I have not turned away from his decrees.
23 I have been blameless before him
and have kept myself from sin.
24 The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.
25 To the faithful you show yourself faithful,
to the blameless you show yourself blameless,
26 to the pure you show yourself pure,
but to the devious you show yourself shrewd.
27 You save the humble
but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.
28 You, Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.
29 With your help I can advance against a troop;
with my God I can scale a wall.
30 As for God, his way is perfect:
The Lord’s word is flawless;
he shields all who take refuge in him.
Are you weary? We are told, in these Covid19 days, that we should prepare for a marathon of endurance rather than expect a sprint to finish line. And so today we reach a psalm that requires patient reading. Here are the first 30 verses. Tomorrow we will reflect on the last 20. It is one of the longest psalms in the psalter. And it is one of the few psalms we can place in a fairly clear context: for it is ascribed to David following a series of victories in battle over adversaries. In fact, you can read the psalm almost word for word in 2 Samuel 22.2-51, in its setting. It is rather mythic, if you look. In the verses preceding his ‘song of thanksgiving’ David has been doing battle with six-fingered giants. He is described as ‘growing weary’ (2 Samuel 21.15). The song, therefore, with that context around it, quite understandably refers to David discovering the strength (from God – despite weariness) to ‘advance against a troop and scale a wall’.
As we enter the third week of a new way of living hedged with social distancing, staying at home and loosing close contact (apart from via social media) with many people, we , too, can begin to feel weary and flag a little.
So what leaps of the page of Psalm 18.1-30 which raises my spirit?
The primary focus of the psalm is on God’s character – using descriptions of solid, unshakeable stability: such as ‘my strength’, ‘my rock’, ‘my fortress’, ‘my deliverer’, ‘my shield’, ‘the horn of my salvation’ and ‘my stronghold’. The first words of the psalm proclaim the psalmist’s love for the Lord.
The sweep of the psalm attends to some very real circumstances of danger, threat, fear and distress experienced by the writer (vs4-6). Then there is a tremendous sense of God in action as foundations are shaken (earlier psalms use similar imagery), and darkness shrouds a land, as thunder and wind and lightning and mighty waters surge, as calamity descended. ‘The Lord was my support,’ he says in vs 18. ‘He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.’
In these days of constraint and huge limitations, being able to walk out onto Warley Woods, even only once a day, it is good to be out in open space, my ‘broad space’. But I have noticed something disturbing about my response to others in recent days. I am becoming aware that even in the spaciousness that the woods afford us, I am becoming more and more wary of others and find it wearying just to see others – even if they are socially distancing appropriately. I feel a weariness at the shops and on the streets walking back with shopping that I did not feel before. I can identify with the way in which being surrounded by enemies made the psalmist weary and I hate the fact that I am now seeing people with such wariness that I almost (I am ashamed to say) consider any stranger, or even a friend, to be an enemy. But this is the psychological affect this virus is having on me, and perhaps all of us.
Psalm 18 is a song of thankfulness, though. In these days when we are constantly reminded to clean our hands thoroughly, the psalmist uses that image of clean hands twice (vs 20 and 24) as a description of how he approaches God. The clean hands might be a sign of a ‘clean conscience’. How we respond to God depends, it seems, on where our heart is. If we are faithful (or loyal), God appears to us as faithful. If we are blameless, God seems blameless. If we are pure, God is pure. But to the crooked minded, God seems perverse. But to those who put their trust in God, even in the face of overwhelming circumstances, God reveals that his purpose is to raise up the humble and dethrone the haughty. God’s character is to shield all and be a refuge to all who seek his care. That’s good to know in these wearisome days.
When reading this psalm I didn’t really get past the opening words “I love you, O Lord my strength”. When was the last time I prayed such words of love to God? These words offer us a contemplative prayer mantra for these weary times. We often pray words of praise and thanks for God’s steadfast and faithful love to us but how often do we express our love for the Lord in such a simple and intimate way? A repeated and simple prayer of love and adoration can be such a help when we can feel weighed down by troubles. Yes this is a marathon, like David’s seemingly endless battles with enemies, but the life of prayer continues with the communion of saints and into eternity. Being in the presence of the God of love and simply loving him in return can lift us out of weariness into a place of renewing life.
ReplyDeleteI did, however, also read up to v.30 and can’t help wonder if when the psalmist prayed for help he expected God to answer with the earth trembling and mountains shaking and consuming fire! Our prayers are not always answered in the way we expect.