Easter Sunday Psalm-Drive

Photo: daffodils blooming in my neighbor's yard. I grew up in Puyallup, Wash., famed for its "Daffodil Festival." Besides a daffodil's bright yellow beauty, I love its "trumpet" shape, so appropriate for proclaiming this promise of our own resurrection: "The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor. 15:52).

In my childhood, when gas wasn’t so expensive, my father enjoyed taking the family on a Sunday afternoon drive. Even on familiar roads, we’d discover a new sight. Occasionally, my husband does the same thing. Our favorite spring route winds through orchards and foothills with astonishing patches of wildflowers.

My repeat journeys through the book of Psalms are something like those drives. I have no idea how many times I’ve read that book. I do know the edges of its pages are well-thumbed, with notes and underlining on every page. Yet I still discover new things.

Often when I come back to a psalm, I remember when it previously connected to a life challenge or event. I personalized Psalm 18 in a time of great anxiety and need. I was 32 at the time and still single. My parents had recently died just six months apart. I’d interrupted my master’s degree studies to return home and settle their affairs and empty their home. While it sat unsold, I returned to graduate school and finished that degree. I was near the end of my personal savings and could not find a job in my field. Going “home” was no longer an option. My parents’ still-empty home was 2,000 miles away. I needed to vacate my college housing by the end of July.


My desperate prayers reminded God of scriptural promises to take care of widows (and single women, like me, I hoped), orphans (my parents were gone) and aliens (I was just a temporary resident of this college town). One morning in my personal devotions I read through Psalm 18. Many verses became prayers: “I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise” (v. 3). “He rescued me because he delighted in me” (v.19). “To the faithful you show yourself faithful” (v. 25).

As I walked to the block-away college track to jog, squirrels cavorted in the old trees along the sidewalk. I thought of verse 33: “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer” (the poetic “hind’s feet” in old translations), referring to the strength and agility of deer in mountainous terrain. This time, however, I adjusted it to the prayer that God would make my feet like the agile feet of squirrels flinging among the branches. I needed His strength and miracle to get through these difficult circumstances.

God did answer my prayers, just in time, that last week of college housing. A failed interview at one large institution opened the door to an interview at a sister company, and a job offer there. Plus, the boss arranged for me to have temporary housing with one of his employees. Because I had no car, she drove out and got me and my few belongings, and took me home with her. For several months, until I could afford to live on my own, I slept on a mattress on the floor. Yet even this was of God, and how He “brought me out into a spacious place” (Psalm 18:19).

Other portions of that psalm reminded me of the awesome power and character of God. But I recently realized how much deeper I could go in understanding it. Bible teacher William MacDonald (1917-2007), in his Believer’s Bible Commentary, said this is really a psalm about Easter and the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Psalm 18:49 is quoted in Romans 15:9 as referring to Christ. MacDonald comments: “Nowhere else in the Bible are we given such a vivid account of the tremendous battle that took place in the unseen world at the time of our Savior’s resurrection.”

May I suggest reading and meditating on Psalm 18 this Easter? Some sections to consider, as broken down by MacDonald:
1-3: Praise to God.
4-6: Christ’s dying.
7-15: Celestial war against evil.
16-19: Victory in the resurrection.
20-30: The raising of the sinless One.
31-42: Christ’s second coming.
43-45: Christ’s reign.
46-50: Closing praise.
For your own closing praise, consider speaking back to God the doxology of Romans 11:33-36 which begins: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"