Message: 

The psalmist knew from experience there are times in our lives, crisis times when we are really up against it, when the only thing we can do is trust and wait. He even repeats it. Wait in  silence. Against the odds, David the soldier king and psalmist knew this. First as a mere boy, vulnerable without armour, facing the giant Goliath, before the pebble from his sling killed Goliath. Later as a warrior general he battled the Philistines, time and again.  When he was King, David knew grief when his beloved son Absalom rebelled against him and was finally killed. He knew isolation surrounded by plotters. This psalm gives voice to feelings of despair and abandonment.   

The   soldiers we remember today, perhaps knew of that wait in inner silence, maybe before going over the top in the First World War, or before landing on the beaches in Normandy in the Second. Waiting for combat in The Falkland Islands or in Afghanistan or Iraq.  Before any war-like action, when people know life and wholeness is threatened, they can experience that crisis time where all one can do is trust.   

If you haven’t been in a war zone, maybe you too experience it when you submit to anaesthetic and the skill of doctors for a major operation, in the battle for the health of your body. Waiting, hoping and trusting. That is what God’s people have done throughout history. And in the waiting they have found God to be solid: a rock, a fortress, a refuge.   

Whatever the crisis or storm around, fierce battle, extreme weather, cancers or viruses assailing the body, even though they feel, in the psalmist’s memorable  words, like a leaning wall or a tottering fence,  when they pour out their heart, they are strengthened. Because, whatever the outcome, we, God’s people know, that God holds us from here to eternity. He has written our name on the palm of his hand.  We can trust Him.

Hymn My Soul Finds Rest in God Alone