Day 38: Psalm 23 Through the Lens of Suffering
During Advent in the year 2020, I wonder if Psalm 23 might have more to offer us if we read it through the lens of suffering. I have sometimes assumed that David penned this poem while lounging around green meadows, beside quiet waters. Now I am not so sure. I wonder if David could have written this in the heat of passionate pursuit. David had a pretty interesting life—rich with danger and full of opportunities for fear. On several occasions David, a humble shepherd boy, rescued his sheep from lions. In his job as shepherd, he killed the enemy with the instruments of every shepherd: his hands, a rod and staff, and a slingshot. Once David killed a giant by the name of Goliath who had taunted grown men and caused them to run in fear. David became a friend of King Saul, only to have Saul lose all his marbles and become jealous and paranoid of David. Numerous times in the course of David’s life, his enemies chased him hither and yon relentlessly. Later in life, his own son turned against him.
What if David wrote this psalm passionately? What if he yelled it out in an act of blind obedience while he was in the midst of a hot pursuit—chased by evil? What if he was desperately recalling truth in the midst of the adrenalin rush of fear that inevitably arises when one is under attack?
Read this:
“Saul sent men to David’s house to watch it and to kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, warned him, ‘If you don’t run for your life tonight, tomorrow you’ll be killed.’ So Michal let David down through a window, and he fled and escaped.”
1 Samuel 19:11-12 NIV
Picture this: David shimmies down the side of his house, drops to the ground, and runs for his life. He’s being chased by the order of the king! His chance of escape is slim. David realizes this as he runs through fields; he recalls that he left all his weapons tossed carelessly beside the front door of his house. He wishes he had eaten a more hearty evening meal, because he doesn’t know where his next nourishment will come from. The more he runs, the more he thinks. The more he thinks, the more he fears. Suppose he decides that his fear is getting to be too big to deal with, and he begins to reel his racing thoughts back a bit. Suppose he says to himself, “Whoa, Dave. You’re forgetting some really important truths here. Think man, think. You know better than this.”
And thus he begins… Tomorrow, we will consider where this kind of thinking under great duress might have led David and could guide us as we wind down one wild and weird year of madness and mayhem.
