Monday, March 30, 2020
Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my plea! Answer me because you are faithful and righteous. Don’t put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent before you. My enemy has chased me. He has knocked me to the ground and forces me to live in darkness like those in the grave. I am losing all hope; I am paralyzed with fear. I remember the days of old. I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done. I lift my hands to you in prayer. I thirst for you as parched land thirsts for rain. Interlude Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens. Don’t turn away from me, or I will die. Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you. Rescue me from my enemies, Lord; I run to you to hide me. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing. For the glory of your name, O Lord, preserve my life. Because of your faithfulness, bring me out of this distress. In your unfailing love, silence all my enemies and destroy all my foes, for I am your servant. Psalm 143:1-12
Young David
had been the rising star of Israel, having defeated Goliath, called to the
palace to be advisor, spiritual mentor, and chief music therapist to King
Saul. When David later wrote this Psalm,
he was remembering the aftermath of Saul’s paranoiac rage that drove David not
only from the palace, but from any kind of life at all. David was hounded by Saul’s armies, forced to
live with the spiders and scorpions in caves, or just anywhere out of Saul’s
reach. In light of his reputation,
position, calling, service and his very life hanging by a thread, we can
understand the future king’s deepening into the downward spiral of depression!
If you’re one
of those A-type, always up, optimistic persons who has never had a down moment,
blessed with an always-full-and-running-over glass – on behalf of 99.75% of the
world…you’re really annoying to the rest of us who live in reality!
I love old
sayings (not just because I’m old – I’ve loved hearing them all my life). One of those sayings is MISERY LOVES
COMPANY – but, frankly, who wants another depressed person around
when you’re already hanging on for dear life?
Answer: just about
everybody. And with good reason; when
you’re depressed who wants a Jack Russell Springer jumping up and down with a
dog-toothy smile, wanting to play? No, we
want a Bassett Hound, willing to just lay next to us with body heat and a slow
pulse we can feel in rhythm with our own.
We want someone who has, or is, walking where we’re drowning. We don’t want to be told cheer up…it’s
a beautiful day; we want to be understood, because whatever beauty God’s
created to see out there, on our inside it’s darker than
midnight!
For You Today
King David
walked there, and he thought deeply about it, and gives us the kind of lifeline
that brings a little refreshing rain on the parched ground of souls that have
been ground down like powder and swept away with the wind of chance. And David knows the only genuinely sane way
out is the way of the upward; it’s to take the deepening sense of depression
and own it before God.
Only there is the beginning of restoration. Let’s face it, you can’t climb
out of the pit; you must be led-out, by the Hand of One who has conquered it! So, if you’re ready, He is!
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