Psalm 27
1 Of
David-
The Lord is my light and my salvation,
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold
of my life,
Of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the
evil ones approached me to consume me;
my adversaries and
oppressors,
they stumble and fall.
3 If an
army camp against me,
my heart will not fear,
if battle arise on me,
in this I trust.
4 One
thing I asked of the Lord,
that do I seek,
to dwell in the house of the
Lord
all of my living days,
to see the delightfulness of
the Lord,
to seek in his temple.
5 He will
hide me in his dwelling place in the evil days,
Hide me in the refuge of his
tent,
Raise me upon a rock.
6 Now is
my head high,
Over my enemies around me,
I offer sacrifices in his
tent, sacrifices of joyful shouts,
Let me sing and make music
for the Lord.
7 Hear my
voice, O Lord, when I call out,
Be gracious to me and answer
me.
8 To you my heart says,
8 To you my heart says,
“Seek my face, Lord, I seek
your face.”
9 Do not
hide your face from me,
Do not turn away your
servant in anger.
You have been my help,
Do not forsake me, do not
abandon me,
O God, my salvation.
10 My
father and mother leave me,
But God will take me in.
11 Show me
your way, O Lord
Lead me on a level path
Because of my enemies.
12 Do not
give me to the soul of my foes,
Because false witnesses have
risen against me,
and he that breathes out
violence.
13 If I
did not believe that I will see
the goodness of the Lord
the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living
14 Wait
for the Lord,
Let your heart be strong and
take heart,
And wait for the Lord.
Today
it seems like every kid is born knowing how to swim. My two and three year old nieces are little
water bugs and have been for at least a year.
I wasn’t quite so excited about the water when I was little. I didn’t grow up being able to go to the pool
whenever I wanted- yes, my neighborhood had a pool but it wasn’t great and we
couldn’t afford a membership but we did occasionally go to another pool if the
housework was done and we had enough time on the weekend (a very rare occasion
since both Mom and Dad worked on the weekends).
Not to mention packing up three young girls to go to the pool couldn’t
have been an easy task for my parents.
My sister’s and I didn’t get to go to swim lessons every week either, so
on these few occasions when we did go to the pool our Dad would jump in and try
to teach us. I will never forget holding
onto the side of the pool and extending my legs out behind me and kicking with
all of my might while Daddy kept his hand right underneath me to keep me
up. As far as I was concerned that was
all I needed- a wall and Daddy’s hand.
Unfortunately I quickly learned that holding onto the wall and keeping
Daddy that close wouldn’t get me across the pool and I kept trying- every time
we went to the pool I would start at the wall and try to let go.
The
whole swimming thing never really kicked in though until I was in fourth grade
and at a pool party with all of my friends.
Nothing is more embarrassing than being the only one who can’t swim, so
I just didn’t tell anyone. Instead I
took a deep breath, remembered all that Dad had taught me over the previous
years, jumped into the 5-foot section… and swam. I was beyond excited! That summer I took the
swim test at camp in the 10-foot section and even though I wasn’t the fastest
or the best, nothing could stop me because I could finally swim! Every time I jumped into the pool I went
through the same process- deep breath, remember what Daddy taught me, and
jump. It always worked.
Today’s
Psalm shows David with a very similar attitude about life. In these first verses we find a person who
not only has high self-confidence (something I was definitely lacking until
that pool party), but he also had incredible confidence in the Lord- and why
not? Life is great! David writes with the tone that sounds like he is relaxing
in a floating chair on the pool with a sweet tea and his iPod playing
quietly. Maybe it is during “adult swim”
so David knows that no kid is going to come splash him or flip him over so
there is nothing to worry about.
David
opens his psalm with something that I have always thought of as one of the
ultimate praises in the Bible- “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
shall I fear?” Throughout the whole of
scripture the term “light” is used to denote perfect happiness. David opens his psalm speaking of the perfect
happiness that he feels because of the Lord- is there any greater affirmation?
For many of us, even if we are only “pretty happy” we feel as if nothing can stop
us, so I can’t even begin to grasp just how confident David feels knowing and that
the Lord is on his side. Going on in the
text, David answers that question- he is so confident that no one will be able
to approach him and if they try, he isn’t even afraid. David’s confidence and trust in God is so
great that an army can come against him and he won’t fear. I assume that like most other armies they
could be carrying weapons, riding horses, and wearing some kind of terrifying
clothing while yelling all sorts of things… ok, so maybe I have the movie
Braveheart playing in my head. The point
is that David is not praying for protection- he knows it is there.
I
recently found myself talking to a swim coach who works mostly with
adults. I asked him what the hardest
part of coaching adults was and he began to explain that adults know too
much. We are aware of the complications
that can occur when swimming if we don’t have a strong enough stroke or breathe
correctly or tilt our head correctly.
Every summer we see the unfortunate stories on the news of someone
drowning, and if we have low self-confidence in the pool we are more likely to
remember those stories. The coach
continued to tell me that he preferred coaching children because they have much
less fear if not no fear- water is just a big playground to them (I must have
missed that memo as a child learning to swim).
Children don’t think things through to figure out exactly what needs to
be done and they very likely don’t watch the news and then remember the tragic
stories that they might have seen.
Children are more than excited to jump into the water and go- usually
the one thing that holds the children back is the fear of the parents who very
worriedly slip on the water wings (with good reason) before letting their
children jump. Since I had already been
thinking about the text for today’s worship service, I couldn’t help but think
about David when these differences were explained to me. Just as the children have no fear and jump into
the pool as if it is nothing, David had no fear and continued through life as
if it was nothing- God was on his side and had already given David his water
wings and that was all that mattered.
David didn’t waste time trying to think through every possible scenario
or technique- David simply trusted.
What
is even more impressive to me is that the only thing that David is asking for
in these first verses is that he be in communion with the Lord for all of his
life. And what a significant prayer that
is as it once again shows us just how much self-confidence and God-confidence
David has- enough that he isn’t praying for anything other than to be with
God.
I
think I could say that after I learned to swim I was fairly confident- maybe
not as confident as David but I was definitely excited about life. I remember going camping in Brevard, NC with
my family later that summer. The outside
temperature was probably in the 90s since it was early August so we needed a
way to cool off. Sliding Rock is a
natural water slide in Pisgah Forest- one huge rock that has been smoothed out
by the 54-degree water that flows down into a ten-foot deep pool at the
bottom. This water slide is quite
popular during the later months of the summer since nothing can cool you off quite
like plunging into that pool of water at the bottom. Well, after watching teenagers go speeding
down the rock for about ten minutes I decided not to test my luck but so much
and found the slower side of the rock that would only dump me into about six or
seven feet of this ridiculously cold water.
Mom and Dad watched from up top with my baby sister- probably at least
fifty feet up- while my older sister and I went to slide. My turn finally came so I sat down on that
cold rock, and seeing my big sister waiting in the pool of water after taking
her first slide, pushed off. What I
didn’t realize was that I sat down on the edge of the slow side so the current
pulled me over and I went speeding down the rock and was thrown into the
ten-foot pool of water. I was terrified
and it was as if I had forgotten how to swim- I was sure that I was going to
drown.
This
psalm takes about as drastic as a turn as my slide down the rock did- in verse
seven we find a much less confident David.
“Hear, O Lord, I cry aloud!” We don’t know what has happened, but that
isn’t important. Our very self-confident
and God-confident friend is not so self-confident anymore. We get the idea that David’s incredible
prayer that the only thing he wanted, to live in communion with God, wasn’t
answered as he pleas for the Lord to not hide the Lord’s face. David is fulfilling a command given to the
Israelites years before, to continually seek the face of the Lord, but it seems
that David can’t find it. Something has
happened to shake him and all of the affirmation and praise that we heard in
the opening verses has been turned on its head as we feel the fear that David
is now expressing. David’s fear is so
great that he even begs the Lord to not turn him away. It seems that this is quite possibly the
furthest David has ever felt from the Lord, however he continues to pray. We don’t find David cursing the Lord or
asking why whatever this is has happened to him, instead we find him praying through
a string of imperatives and these imperatives alone create a very real plea- “Hear, O Lord. Be gracious. Do not hide your
face from me. Do not turn your servant
away, Do not cast me off, do not forsake me. Teach me your way, lead me on a
level path. Do not give me up!” I don’t think it would be a far stretch to
say that we have all prayed this prayer at one time or another. However, through all of these very strong and
passionate pleas, David closes his psalm with a word of hope as he reminds
himself and his readers that through all of this he continues to believe that
he will one day see the goodness of the Lord in this life.
We
have all had this moment. Maybe some of
us are experiencing it now. That moment
when we don’t know what else to do other than to pray… if we can even think
that far. Maybe we received bad news
about a family member… or maybe the stresses of our economy are hitting just a
bit too close to home… maybe we have been presented with a challenge that we
just don’t know how to even start handling it… it can be a number of things and
unfortunately sometimes it is a number of things all at once. What we can learn from David is that we can
still pray to the Lord- through it all, we can pray. This is a message that it is woven in all
over the Old Testament as our ancestors came across any number of challenges,
yet continued to pray. It doesn’t matter
what we say in these prayers and it doesn’t matter if we are upset- as long as
we continue the conversation the relationship will continue.
What
makes this just a bit easier is keeping the conversation going all of the time,
not just when we are losing all confidence and don’t know what to do. This psalm can be read in a very cyclical
nature, over and over again, that is very real to life. Do one thing for me- take a moment and listen
as I read the psalm once more, only this time when I read the very first line
“Of David”, change it from David to your own name and continue to hear the
psalm as if it were your own story.
1 Of David-
The Lord is my light and my salvation,
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life,
Of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the
evil ones approached me to consume me;
my adversaries and oppressors,
they stumble and fall.
3 If an army
camp against me,
my heart will not fear,
if battle arise on me,
in this I trust.
4 One thing I
asked of the Lord,
that do I seek,
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all of my living days,
to see the delightfulness of the Lord,
to seek in his temple.
5 He will
hide me in his dwelling place in the evil days,
Hide me in the refuge of his tent,
Raise me upon a rock.
6 Now is my
head high,
Over my enemies around me,
I offer sacrifices in his tent,
sacrifices of joyful shouts,
Let me sing and make music for the
Lord.
7 Hear my
voice, O Lord, when I call out,
Be gracious to me and answer me.
8 To you my heart says,
8 To you my heart says,
“Seek my face, Lord, I seek your face.”
9
Do not hide your face from me,
Do not turn away your servant in anger.
You have been my help,
Do not forsake me, do not abandon me,
O God, my salvation.
10 My father
and mother leave me,
But God will take me in.
11
Show me your way, O Lord
Lead me on a level path
Because of my enemies.
12 Do not give
me to the soul of my foes,
Because false witnesses have risen
against me,
and he that breathes out violence.
13 If I did
not believe that I will see
the goodness of the Lord
the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living
14
Wait for the Lord,
Let your heart be strong and take
heart,
And wait for the Lord.
Life
can present us with a whole lot of good, and a whole lot of bad. There are times when we live like the little
kids at the pool who jump in without a worry in the world, other times we might
be more cautious like when I chose to slide down the slower side of the rock,
and then there are the unfortunate times when life throws us into the deep end
even though we took all of the precautions.
Our own self-confidence actually has very little, if anything, to do
with how things happen.
That
afternoon when I sat down on the rock, I was sure that I was about to have the
time of my life and had already decided I would go down at least ten more times
but then I felt myself pick up speed and hit the water- I was terrified, I forgot
how to swim, and I was sure that I was going to drown and I probably would
have… except that the next thing I knew I was in my Daddy’s arms- the same
Daddy who seconds before was standing about 50-feet above me with my Mom and
baby sister. I was cold and shaken up,
but I was ok because Daddy had me.
And
that is just how the psalm closes. Many
commentators suggest that the final verse of the psalm is not the word of David
at all, but rather a salvation oracle. These
final words are the words that we can carry with us throughout all of our days,
both good and bad, just as I carry the swim lessons and even more importantly
the memory of my Daddy holding me every time I am near a pool or
waterfront. As you go out into the
world, remain confident in both yourself and the Lord when possible… but always
remember that even when you feel that you can’t handle what life is throwing at
you, you can still continue to talk to God and be confident that the Lord is on
your side. In all that you do, remember
the final words of today’s psalm-
14Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD!
In the name of God, our rock
and our salvation, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment