The beginning of Psalm 31:
In you, O Lord, I take refuge.
Let me never be put to shame.
In your justice, set me free,
hear me and speedily rescue me.
and the psalm continues to speak trust in the Lord, no matter whatever kind of distress the psalmist is obviously going through.
I, on the other hand, also have confidence in the Lord. But I also know that His Will may be not to save me. It is all according to His Divine Plan. So be it.
1 comment:
I actually have never interpreted these 'rescue me' Psalms in an earthly way. I love every single Psalm, and Psalm 13 (How Long Oh Lord) especially. The supplication, the need to let the enemy be thwarted, shamed or crushed, has always been in the spiritual sense for me. I think I interpret it this way because of Jesus and Calvary. He too quotes a Psalm, and being 'rescued' by God is in no way practical, it is spiritual.... and it is an eternal and true rescue, into the arms of God. As you say, His Will may not be to "save me from getting hit by a truck", but His Will is most definitely to save me. I lost a loved one at a very young age and it took a while to work through that. The world doesn't owe us 98 years, or 17. It owes us nothing. We owe God ever second though, whether we walk in luxury or walk in poverty.
I think that is one of the hardest lessons in Judeo-Christian theology: the idea that God wants us to be apart, not breaking even the least of the Rules, which means a denial of Self most people ridicule and think is an unecessary burden. It is, if we think the World owes us something. We want to cash in our winning lottery ticket before we die. But there is no winning lottery ticket. We are the prize, our life, our deeds, our love...whether we live 120 years or 5 minutes.
The Psalms have greatly comforted me in this manner. God can come to my rescue, but He may not necessarily free us from our prison or block that stray bullet. Since God cannot do evil, there is actually Good in everything we may not fully understand, or perceive at the moment as bad. We are like 2-dimensional characters incapable of understanding the whole cube or sphere because it is outside of our 2-dimensional perspective. Like the baby that cries when mommy covers her face with her hands and "disappears." The baby feels abandoned, but mommy is actually right there.
Those who don't believe in God just curse mom because they are convinced they have been abandoned and there is no such thing as mom, or mom doesn't exist while her hands are in front of her face.
When we pray Psalms without realizing the Greatness of God, when we curse Pilate for washing his hands or the Sanhedrin for crucifying Christ, we are actually not understanding that God is always in control and that the Sacrificial Lamb cannot be slaughtered by someone uncircumcised, but it MUST be slaughtered, and only the Sanhedrin can name a King and only the Sanhedrin can select a High Priest or name a High Priest's replacement. There is a reason Pilate washed his hands, and there is a reason God Incarnate died.
And there will be a reason we die.
The devil makes us think there is no good reason... but it's a lie and it leads the faithful astray.
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