Terror | Wayfarer

Israel — Cave in En Gedi (Photo credit: andrew dowsett)

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 57

My heart is confident in you, O God;
my heart is confident.
No wonder I can sing your praises!
Psalm 57:7 (NLT)

According to the liner notes at the beginning of Psalm 57, David wrote these lyrics at a very precise moment in time. Let me set the stage:

David had been anointed the future King of Israel by the prophet Samuel when he was a young boy of 12 or 13.
David subsequently killed Goliath and became wildly popular. He becomes best buds with Prince of Israel. Things were really looking up for the young man.
Check that. Rather than being made king as prophesied, David suddenly finds himself the victim of jealous hatred by the current King of Israel (who was given to mental health issues and fits of homicidal rage).
David flees for his life into the barren desert and holes up in the back of a cave.
Crazy King Saul (think Javier Bardem in Skyfall) and a posse of a thousand men find out where David is hiding and hit the trail to kill him.

And, at that moment the wanted young man hiding in a cave with a psychopath monarch and one thousand soldiers bearing down on him picks up his harp and sings: “My heart is CONFIDENT.”

Of course he does. The truth of matter is, those of us who follow God are called, time and time again, to swim against the tide of momentary circumstance and natural human emotion. Faith trumps fear. Trust in God leads to inexplicable peace and joy in the midst of terror:

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Written by Jeremiah as he surveyed the destruction of Jerusalem and watched desperate people eating the flesh of their own dead children to survive; Lamentations 3:22-23).
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” – Jesus (Matthew 5:44)
“You are blessed when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil about you because of me.” – Jesus (Matthew 5:11)
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. – (James 1:2-3)
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. – Romans 5:3
Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. – I Thessalonians 5:8

When you consider that David was “a man after God’s own heart,” then it’s no wonder that in the midst of tough circumstances and facing overwhelming odds David felt a surge of confidence. So it is with those whose hearts are surrendered to God who is exceeding, abundantly in and through, above and beyond momentary human circumstance.

LRA Drawing LR — This is a young girl’s drawing from one of Taylor’s Art Therapy sessions in Uganda. She drew a picture of an LRA soldier killing her aunt in front of her.

Their mouths are full of cursing, lies, and threats.
    Trouble and evil are on the tips of their tongues.
They lurk in ambush in the villages,
    waiting to murder innocent people.
    They are always searching for helpless victims.
Like lions crouched in hiding,
    they wait to pounce on the helpless.
Like hunters they capture the helpless
    and drag them away in nets.
Their helpless victims are crushed;
    they fall beneath the strength of the wicked.
Psalm 10:7-10 (NLT)

God’s Message is not a novel. It is not book to check off your mandatory reading list and then put on a shelf. It is a life-giving guidebook for the journey that grows deeper, richer, more poignant and meaningful the further you travel in life’s journey. I keep reading it and studying it because, while it never changes, I change. The wider my life’s horizon expands with time and experience, the more rich with meaning these chapters become each day.

Even a year ago, today’s chapter would have struck me much differently.

Our daughter, Taylor and her husband, Clayton, have been in Uganda this summer. Taylor is studying Art Therapy, and has been putting her education to work with students and other individuals there. The stories that Taylor has shared on her blog are heart wrenching. The area they are working is the site of some of the worst terror carried out by a group calling themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army.

As I read Psalm 10 this morning, the mental images of the first hand accounts Taylor and Clayton have heard this summer flashed into my mind. The description of the wicked lying in wait like lions ready to pounce on innocent victims could not be a more apt parallel to the stories Taylor has related from the victims of the LRA:

Jackie and her father (who died) were abducted when she was 12 years old. She was given to a soldier to be his wife. She gave birth to a child in the bush. She drew a picture of herself climbing up mountains with a baby on her back. She and her husband escaped and lived together for a while but he left her and the baby, so now she lives with her mother. She leaves her mother’s house at 6 in the morning and bikes to work, which is a 3-4 hour commute each way!

Todays chapter leave me thinking about evil and how it does not change from generation to generation. It’s a nice idea to believe humanistic epithets and pop music lyrics that we will all just get along and live in peace and harmony if we just give peace a chance with a little love in our heart. Yet I’ve yet to find one of these lyrical, idealistic notions that adequately addresses and solves the presence and reality of evil in the human heart and, by extension, in the world at large.

Today I feel like my thoughts are swirling all over the place. I’m thankful for the fact that when my children were young I taught them, but then as they get older they teach me through their own lives, knowledge and experiences. I’m thankful that God’s Message is living and active and constantly meeting me where I happen to be on life’s road. I’m thinking about LRA, terrorism, and evil. My heart is crying out with the Psalmist:

Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
so mere people can no longer terrify them.