••••••• INSPIRATIONAL THOUGHTS •••••••

Lessons From David

"Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall." -Psalms 55:22

If the Psalmist David were alive today, I think I might want to visit him in the desert, on one of his good days of course.  Unlike some Christian ascetics, he had a way of offering the deepest praises to God, even when sand was whistling past his ears. 

David knew deserts. Not just the arid sands of Judea, but also the inner deserts that dry up the heart and set the mind wreathing with anger against ones enemies.  David’s enemies were not always people.  At times, he fought the circumstances that caused him to be vulnerable, helpless and defenseless.  He knew betrayal by his friends (Psalms 55), the torment of those who sought to kill him (Psalms 64), and the angst of a mind turned on itself in shame (Psalms 51), and even the quiet of a God-absent prayer (Psalms 22).

Nevertheless, David was a man who found no reason not to lift his soul in searching ecstasy for the God that he knew as the fundamental meaning of his life.  When David says, “Oh God, you are my God” (Psalms 64), one believes it.  In a sense, he has paid the price for knowing God intimately.  That price for some is quite steep.  For David it was isolation, loneliness, depression, and rejection, just to name a few.  Listen as he clamors for some (to him unknown) reader to understand, desperate to be rid of his pain.

My heart is in anguish within me;

the terrors of death assail me.

Fear and trembling have beset me;

horror has overwhelmed me.

I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest—

I would flee far away

and stay in the desert; Selah

I would hurry to my place of shelter,

far from the tempest and storm.” (Psalm 55)

David speaks through what he feels.  However, his feelings are always expressed in the context of his faith.  In almost postmodern fashion, David comes to reconcile God’s utter silence, his own desperation, and the ultimate glory that is His Lord.  It is not a contradiction for David to utter in the same song of anquish, “But as for me, I trust in you,” (Psalms 55)

David speaks in hope-filled praises.  Hope is not the guarantee of good feelings or solved problems.  It is, rather, the idea that in this event, however hard and trying it is, God has not ceased to be Himself.  He is still the one who guides life; all of it, personal and corporate.  He is still the one who is available through the searches of one’s deepest inner longings, and the outward clamoring for answers to life’s most puzzling dilemmas. This availability is not always relational.  Sometimes God speaks by not saying a word.  Sometimes he assures the desert wonderer of His watching eye by a set of circumstances that refuse any other explanation than that God is.

When life is experienced from its underside, where creepy, crawly experiences shiver the soul, maybe it is a good time to visit David.  Not a friendly visit in the throne room of the King’s Palace in North Jerusalem, but in the desert.  After all, it was from there that he was able to instruct us to become care-free.

-Read past thoughts-