THEREFORE (Psalm 46)

Ordinary "buttes" like this one in central Washington would leave

 me breathless to climb. That's why Psalm46 and its image of
 mountains falling into the sea is so powerful!

(An ongoing series on the 48 psalms listed as "recommended reading" for times of depression, from counselor/pastor David Seamands' book Healing for Damaged Emotions.)

Whenever I run across the word “therefore” in scripture, I’ve learned to pause and ask, “What is it there for?” Typically this adjective means “consequently, for that reason, because of that, to that end.” In Psalm 46, it links God’s sufficiency as our refuge, strength, and help when our world is falling apart.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way

And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

Though its waters roar and foam

And the mountains quake with its surging. (vv. 1-3)

For years while reading this psalm, I’d find myself humming the tune to Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” based on it. He had composed it while his own life was in danger from religious leaders. When Luther felt discouraged or depressed, he’d ask his co-worker Philipp Melanchthon to sing this hymn with him. Its sturdy, confident lyrics (so blunt and strong in the original German) would lift him spiritually.

IT’S STILL RELEVANT

Fast-forward five centuries from Luther. Four passenger planes hijacked by terrorists plunge into landmark high-rise business buildings in New York, the Pentagon in the nation’s capital, and a farm field, missing its presumed target of the White House. Nearly 3,000 are killed, 6,000 injured. Damage estimates are ten billion dollars. Stunned by this sick enemy attack, a reeling nation looked to an aging spiritual leader, Billy Graham, then 83. From the podium at the National Cathedral three days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he brought the timeless message of Psalm 46.  His points:

*This event was a reminder of the mystery and reality of evil.  God is not the author of evil.

*This event showed us our need for each other.

*This event can give a message of hope for the present and the future as it shows our nation how much we need a spiritual renewal and hope for this life, and the life to come, in Heaven for those who believe in Christ.

HISTORY REPEATED

The history woven into Psalm 46 most likely is when the Assyrians lay siege against Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah (725-696 B.C.). Verse 4 (“a river whose streams make glad the city of God”) probably infers Hezekiah’s public works project of an underground channel that brought water under Jerusalem’s walls (2 Kings 20:20). That pool inside the city sustained it during a long siege. The end of verse 5, “God will help her at break of day,” sounds like 2 Kings 19:35-36, when, overnight, a mysterious illness (“the angel of the Lord,” v. 35) killed thousands of enemy soldiers. The enemy king lived, but he high-tailed it out of there for safety at his palace in Assyria. Imagine having today’s on-the-spot news coverage of such events! Yet in the midst of these scary, bewildering threats to Jerusalem, God was there.

REFUGE AND STRENGTH

Therefore…as the psalm’s refrain reminds us, “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”  Jacob was the rascal who deceived his twin Esau out of the birthright.  He was the schemer who deserved retribution and punishment.  But God saw bigger things for Jacob and broke his stubborn spirit. He was renamed “Israel,” prince.

Verse 1 says God is our refuge and strength. The concluding verse says the “LORD Almighty is with us.”  What better hope for when we’re under spiritual attack—or even the real physical attack masterminded by the forces of evil? Verse 10 reinforces that message for scary and depressing times: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Therefore, when I’m troubled, scared, or depressed, He is my refuge and strength, my ever present help in trouble, the only true place of safety.

Interested in another study I did on Psalm 46? Go to my blog for April 25, 2014:
http://jeannezornes.blogspot.com/2014/04/making-psense-of-psalms-psalm-46.html 

DELIVERANCE! (Psalm 18)

There’s an old folk tale about some blind men trying to describe an elephant. One touched a stout leg and said it was like a tree. The one who touched the elephant’s side called it a strong wall. The one the elephant grabbed by its trunk was sure this mystery was a serpent. The one switched by the animal’s tail thought it was a rope.

Psalm 18 is a lot like that.  It is full of images of God as our rock-solid Protector and Sovereign as David reflects on God’s help in battles against Saul and national enemies. Much of it is also quoted in 2 Samuel 22.

When we’re going through difficult and discouraging times, it’s easy to think God has better things to do than look down and help us. Psalm 18 counters that with a multitude of metaphors of God’s power and care. Its diverse symbols are one reason I keep going back to it to be reminded that nothing is too hard for God. At one of the lowest times of my life, these verses burned into my spirit:

It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights….

You broaden the path beneath me so that my ankles do not turn. (vv. 32-33, 36)

In 1980, two years after both my parents died, I was finishing up a master’s degree at a respected college 2,000 miles from my roots. It had a reputation of placing graduates in Christian publishing, and that was my goal.  I’d saved money for years so I could attend without student loans, and I would graduate without debt. Despite lots of job inquiries, however, I was still jobless just a week before I had to vacate college housing with no place to go and little left for living expenses. I had no car--just my typewriter, books, bedding and clothes. With my parents deceased, going “home” wasn’t an option.

I felt like I was stumbling down a boulder-strewn path, spraining my ankles at every turn. Yet I wanted to claim the image of sure-footedness in this psalm:

With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall. (v. 20)

The impossible “dream job” offer came just days before I would have been homeless. Another employee provided temporary housing (a mattress on the floor of her bedroom) until I got my feet on the ground.  God-things.

Psalm 18 is for rocky times. It opens with images of strength and military might that involve strong places of protection:

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock in whom I take refuge.  He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. (v. 2)

 It’s also a reminder of the unfathomable love of God:

He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. (v. 19)

No matter the challenge, Psalm 18 pulses with hope. It nourishes the weary and wary with the rock-solid truth that God can give us the strength to face our problems. “The Lord lives!  Praise be to my rock! Exalted be God my Savior!” (v. 46).

One Mighty "Mighty Fortress"!

Among our valley's significant rock formations is "Castlerock,"

which  from some angles looks like a fortress with lookouts.

For the "mighty" in health, it's a popular hiking spot.

This Sunday will mark the quincentenary of a pivotal hammering. On the last day of October, in 1517, a monk named Martin Luther nailed a list of his 95 disagreements with church teachings on the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.  Among them: the selling of “indulgences” to supposedly pardon peoples’ sins when all it did was pad the church coffers. His own personal struggle over receiving God’s forgiveness led Luther to see in a new light the scripture from Habakkuk and quoted in Romans, “The just shall live by faith.”  His life threatened, Luther went into protective custody at a sympathizer’s castle for a year where he began translating the Bible from Greek into German.

He also composed a hymn book. This was radical for days when “church music” consisted of Latin chants by priests. The most enduring of his hymns is “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” based on Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength.” Today known as the national hymn of Germany, it’s been translated into almost every known language. Its translation to English rhyme, by the way, was particularly troublesome because the original German was so vivid. There were at least 80 translations to English; the one most popular in America was done in 1852 by a Harvard professor.

The hymn reflects Luther’s awareness of spiritual battle. Often when he faced difficulty and danger, it’s said he’d often resort to singing this song. Not surprisingly, Luther was a musician, too. As a youth, he sang in a boy’s choir. He played flute and lute (a type of guitar), often helping lead congregational singing. He wrote in the foreword of one book:

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.  It controls our thoughts, minds, heart, and spirits….A person who…does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God…does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”

Another Luther quote on music: “If any man despises music, as all fanatics do, for him I have no liking; for music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men.  Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful.  Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.”

Also, “The Devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as before the Word of God.”

In a preface to a hymn  collection, he wrote that God is “praised and honored, and we are made better and stronger in faith, when His holy Word is impressed on our hearts by sweet music.”

One historian said that, by giving the German people both the Bible in their own language and a German hymnbook, Luther enabled the people to listen to God through His Word and respond back to Him in their songs.  As Luther’s passion ignited the fires, congregational singing spread through the churches. Scholars believe some 25,000 hymns were written in just Germany in the first hundred years of the Reformation.

As an aside, Luther had passion for more than scriptural truth and song. No longer a Catholic monk, he became concerned about the plight of some local young nuns, virtually imprisoned in terrible conditions in a nearby convent. Twelve nuns were smuggled out of there in heavy barrels used to ship herring. He found suitable mates for all but one, Katherine Con Bora. He’d resisted the idea of marrying himself, thinking he’d probably die a heretic’s death. But eventually he married her himself.  She was 26 and he, 41. They had six children, four of whom lived to adulthood.

Looking to the rock

It’s known as  “Castlerock,” and the rocky prominence at the edge of my town does seem like a castle. But I like to think of it as “Fortress Rock,” for it seems to have a more military look to it as it guards the valley. It also makes me think of Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” inspired by Psalm 46.

The Psalms repeatedly refer to God as a fortress, strong tower, refuge, bulwark or rampart.  To people who live long ago, these defensive features of walled cities and castles protected them from ground assaults. The era of long-range gunfire and air support changed all that. Today the enemy can sneak and strike within, as we have seen in recent mass shootings like that in a Kenyan mall.

Yet God is bigger than these atrocities that strike our sick, fallen world. Maybe that’s why we need the reminders from scripture that God was, is and forever will be our defense, our fortress, our sure help in time of need.  Of the many psalms that visualize Him in these ways (18, 31, 46, 59, 62, 71, 91, 94), I’m drawn in a special way to Psalm 62. Many of the others are laced with the psalmist’s fears with pleas of “God, help me.” But in Psalm 62, David faces danger with solid faith and trust in God alone. Of particular note is “alone.” Translators had to deal with the Hebrew ‘ak, which has no easy matches to English. Closest are “God only” (NASB) or “God alone” (NIV), which are peppered throughout the text.

The late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, in explaining this psalm, remarked that one problem among today’s Christians is that “we do not trust God only, meaning that we always want to add in something else to trust as well.” In other words, people tend to rely on methodologies and tools to the reduction or exclusion of God’s power.  God can work through people, but our ultimate hope is in God alone.

Psalm 62 brims with affirmations of God’s love and power. It’s a scripture you’ll want to mark up, linking similar terms and repeated words.  In doing so, remember the background of its author.  Before he became king, David was a fugitive from mad King Saul, whom he’d replace. David had to go to “God alone” when enemies attacked and even when his own son tried to usurp the throne.  His enemies wanted to topple him like a feeble fence (v. 3). But he kept his spiritual sights on God alone: his rock, salvation, fortress, salvation, and refuge.

I’m thankful that I can praise God via Luther’s hymn as my “mighty fortress.” I also appreciate the contemporary praise song by Philip McHugh, sung by Steve Green, which lifts this phrase from Psalm 62: “God and God alone.”  When we look to God as our fortress in time of trouble, we can be certain of two things David mentioned in concluding this psalm: God’s love and His power. He will never leave us nor forsake us.  Knowing that, we can find rest in God alone.