Today’s Reading: Psalms 61, 62, 64 & 69

Psalm 61 begins with a cry to our God, and a plea for God to listen to our prayer! Did you ever feel that need well up in you? So His description of His God is beautiful – a rock higher than I, a refuge, a strong tower or even more intimate – shelter under His wings, a longing to dwell in His tent forever. When in trouble, or in the fight of life, these images seem so beautiful to me!

So Psalm 62 goes on to “finding rest in Him alone and again God alone described as rest, my salvation my rock, my fortress – a personal thing which God Himself longs to be for you and me. As David looks around, he is surprised at the unrelenting opposition against himself and repeats again His description of God, as He did above. The word Selah, seems not to fully understood by scholars, but some have described it to be a pause (in the psalm being sung) and again some take it to mean “weigh that up and understand the significance of it.” If this is what it means, it is indeed beautiful to think of all the things God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus is for us! And the little summary of the two things David had heard is 1) God is strong 2) God is loving! Wonder if I have experienced it and still cling to it in moments of desperation each day that that is what God is for me?

Psalm 68 is the cry of David’s heart against those who are planning & scheming against him and the pressure that puts on him. But He remembers that God will shoot them with God’s arrows and thus the joy and praise for “the works of God” at the end of the Psalm.

Psalm 69, I have often heard used to refer to Jesus’ sufferings while submitting to the Father’s will to go to the cross for us. If it is, here is the perfect human being’s emotions laid bare for us to think about when our lives are under pressure. He is perfectly honest about His feelings, but commits all to His Father, instead of doing what I am tempted to do and that is to take my own revenge for injustice or when I can’t get revenge, then to turn to bitterness and anger! Psalm 69 are the emotions which the Lord Jesus experienced while submitting to the Father’s will to “humble Himself, even unto death, and that the death on the cross.” The longing for deliverance and for a sense of God’s closeness must have brought great anguish to our Saviour’s heart when He was forsaken for our sins. But the Lord Jesus did win the battle against pain and pressure and the Psalm ends at committing his enemies to God for just punishment and finally the Psalm breaks out into praise to God for what He will yet do!

So we can be encouraged, because God is not yet finished with what He is doing in our lives. And when under pressure, or in the weariness of an ordinary life, remember what He is for us – a refuge, a high rock or just be like a little baby chick does when needing comfort – being able to hide under the safety and warmth of its mother’s wings and that for us is hiding under our loving Father God’s wings.