“I laid me down and slept; I awaked, for the Lord sustained me.” (Ps 3:6)
The Psalms were written by people who felt life’s pain cut deep. How hard it must have been to – as a father – flee from your own son. This is what David writes about in Psalm 3. Just listen to his desperate cry: “I have so many enemies, Lord!” (Verse 2).
Yet David does something I can certainly learn from: instead of focusing on his problems, he shifts his focus to God. It takes him two verses to lament his fate; but six verses to describe God’s deeds: the One who protects him from all sides (v4); the One who hears his cry for help (v5); the One who cares (v5). With great confidence, he declares: “Help comes only from the Lord” (v9).
To David, God was not merely a “nice idea”; God was a reality. God was the lifeline he could cling to. From her own life, theologian and Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, writes: “God is not a distant deity but a loving presence who meets us in our brokenness and carries us through our struggles. It is in this relationship that we find our security and strength.” As Barbara Brown Taylor also wrote: “God’s promise is not that we will never face hard times, but that we will never face them alone.”
David could lay his worries at God’s feet each night and not brood over them further. Tossing and turning was unnecessary for him because he found himself in the secure safety net of God’s love.
How did David manage this? He trusted God. Just that.
PRAYER: I give my nights of tossing and turning into Your hands, for I, too, trust in You, my Lord.
MUSIC:
Let’s listen to Psalm 3 as a German Orthodox chant.