Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 56: This I know, that God is for me

Psalm 56[1]

¹   Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me;
    all day long foes oppress me;
²   my enemies trample on me all day long, for many fight against me.
    O Most High, ³ when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
⁴   In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid;
    what can flesh do to me?
⁵   All day long they seek to injure my cause;
    all their thoughts are against me for evil.
⁶  They stir up strife, they lurk, they watch my steps.
    As they hoped to have my life,
⁷  so repay^[a] them for their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
⁸   You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.
    Are they not in your record?
⁹  Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call.
    This I know, that^[b] God is for me.
¹⁰  In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise,
¹¹  in God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?
¹²  My vows to you I must perform, O God;
     I will render thank-offerings to you.
¹³  For you have delivered my soul from death,
     and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.

I write this on Ascension Day, May 21^st 2020. In the account of Jesus’ ascension found in the Acts of the Apostles we are told of the joyful loss and doubtful hope of those who were with him as he left his earthly ministry, ‘While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ [2]

Today I posted this picture of a beautiful Ascension Day sky over Warley Woods on my Facebook feed. I asked the question: ‘why do we look up at the sky?’ Replies came from friends various. This one stood out: ‘To remind myself just how small and inconsequential I am in God’s whole scheme of things, yet He still cares for me.’ It puts our self-centredness in perspective.

Stick with this. We shall come on to the psalm!

Perspective comes when we consider how infinitesimally small we are in the presence of trees, too. I have just finished reading Richard Power’s extraordinary book The Overstory – which celebrates the incredible richness and variety of the life of trees and the struggle of humans to delight in them rather than use them as a product. Towards the end of the book he sets humanity in context of creation. ‘Say the planet is born at midnight and it runs for one day… plants make it up on land just before ten pm. Then insects, who instantly take to the air… by eleven pm dinosaurs have shot their bolt, leaving the mammals and birds in charge for an hour… Anatomically modern man shows up four seconds before midnight. The first cave paintings appear three seconds later.’[3]  

Somewhere in that last second of life on earth the psalms were written, Christ lived, died, resurrected and ascended into God – who was there with Christ at creation’s dawn 23 hrs 59 mins and 59 seconds before – and we walked in the sunshine of this day.

Now that puts humanity in perspective.

And yet, such glories and such terrors have we known as a species and race in what is the blink of an eye of eternity. And, as my Facebook friend said, what brings such comfort in the enormity of all of this, is the fact that this God of eternity still ‘cares for me’ so that I cannot be afraid.

Psalm 56 speaks overwhelmingly of the sense of God’s personal interest in the individual – ‘You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record’ (vs8). And when everything seems to overwhelm the psalmist, perhaps especially when everything seems to overwhelm him or her, there at the very eye of the storm of persecution or harm, lies the answer. Not to trust in oneself, but to trust in God. ‘This I know, that God is for me.  In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise,  in God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?’ (vs9-11)

The story of the spread of the Christian faith from that moment of loss – when Jesus ascended into God as the divine human held in the eternal reality of life-giving love – is one of incredible boldness, not fear; of incredible courage, not faint heartedness; of undying movement out and of pushing boundaries beyond the known in to the unknown rather than somehow huddling inward and sticking with a familiar or safe truth.

As we step into the future under the broad sky of heaven and the endless love of God, may we, too, join with the psalmist’s hope-filled assertion: ‘For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.’ (vs13) On this day in the Christian calendar when we celebrate Christ’s ascending into the eternal love of the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, may we also know that we can walk this earth in the time remaining to each one of us with the confidence of eternal love too.

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[1] New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA)
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Footnotes: Psalm 56:7 Cn: Heb rescue; Psalm 56:9 Or because

[2] Thus Jesus ended his earthly ministry, according to Acts 1.10-11.

[3] The Overstory, ©Richard Powers, Penguin, p591-2