IF IT HAD NOT BEEN...
Psalm 124
1. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,
Let Israel now say—
2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us:
3 Then they would have swallowed us alive, when their wrath was kindled against us.
4 Then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul:
5 Then the swollen waters would have gone over our soul.
6 Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as a prey to their
teeth.
7 Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
Some of us, praise God, have never felt we were on the brink of disaster, never teetered on the edge of the abyss, never felt the loss was too great to bear, never lost sight of comforting landmarks as we sailed beyond familiar waters.
But many of us have!
We had heard this psalm of David read to us, may even have read it ourselves many times and thought how fine it was. We may even have heard a good sermon on it [or preached one] and thought it assuring so we tucked it away in our hearts as something fine to tell others who were in trouble.
Then imminent disaster stared us in the face, calamity smashed through the doors of our happy homes and obliterated all sense of comfort and all our good answers, handy quips, fine verses and great sermons vanished like vapor and we knew we were doomed.
But God was magnificent!
We survived. Were saved, and now we were stronger and braver having come through the horror.
Psalm 124 was a familiar song from a psalmist, a lovely-sounding text but now it was a throbbing personal experience. It was no longer just David’s song; it was ours.
We knew that such a deliverance was the work of God. Now we read the text with new eyes and tell our families and friends and fellow-strugglers, “Were it not that the Lord was on my side I would have been swallowed up alive. The swollen waters would have gone over my soul.”
How God worked that deliverance is a complex matter though it isn’t vague or obscure. It’s simply too rich, too multi-faceted, too deep for us to follow all the ways he carries out his acts of rescue.
Friends already in place, truths already stored away in the heart, sights and sounds of brave people around us, bearing their awful losses in a gallant spirit, prayers offered on our behalf—these and so many other things are the already-in-place instruments of God who delivers us.
But that’s the crucial issue for this moment—it is God who delivers us through these lovely realities. We don’t thank the antibiotics or the EKG machine of the surgeon’s scalpel; we thank the people who produce and use such things to bring us health.
In the end it's about persons and in the end it's a Person we turn to and applaud and thank for his gracious power when we are delivered.
For believing people, prayers may well be for deliverance from social, economic, family and other calamities—that’s no surprise, believers are as human as any other humans. When they’re hurt do they not groan, when we cut them do they not bleed, when they’re thirsty do they not need to drink?
But down below their felt need for these basic human necessities there's the desire to stay on their feet in the matter of faith.
Some years back when asked what their greatest fear was when first going into actual combat a great number of soldiers agreed that the overriding fear was not about dying but about failing to live up to expectations, fear of shaming themselves under pressure. That’s no surprise either.
What is true of soldiers is true of those who name the name of the Lord. Their social or physical agony matters but for them the fundamental thing is to stay on their feet as soldiers and servants of God. Understandably, under the burden of pain or loss or bewilderment there is the appeal for God to remove the burden but it is to God the believer turns for help and it is to God they bring their tears and agony if the calamity wrecks all around them.
Standing, perhaps stunned, in the middle of the debris of a life in social ruins they maintain their faith in God and that is a magnificent deliverance. It isn’t just things or relationships—however precious they are—that are under attack, it's their souls, their personhood, their very being.
Then with hearts broken, chests heaving and eyes streaming they realize they're still on their feet. They might once have thought they’d fold or fall apart under disaster, they might have thought that calamity would obliterate their trust in God but now they know better.
But they know this also:
If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,
Let Israel now say—
2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,
when men rose up against us:
3 Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us:
4 Then the waters would have overwhelmed us,
the stream would have gone over our soul:
5 Then the swollen waters would have gone over our soul.
6 Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth.
7 Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word. com.
No comments:
Post a Comment