I have to admit, when I read Psalm 91, I find it difficult to silence my inner skeptic. I read about a God who shelters and protects those who turn to him from harm, and I immediately begin to come up with a list of those people I know for whom it didn’t seem to turn out that way. The young couple who lost their premature baby after just 4 weeks of life in the neo-natal intensive care unit, who prayed desperately for her to live. The middle-aged business executive who was laid off by the company for which he had worked for nearly 40 years, just before he became eligible to retire. The young man who was so brokenhearted because his fiancé had taken her own life just after Valentine’s Day. Where was God when they needed him?
Katherine E. Amos, a member of the faculty of Wake Forest University Divinity School, asks, “Can we take this invitation seriously in the twenty-first century? We live in a world that is insecure, frightening, and unsafe. In the United States, some experienced years of relative prosperity and safety until 9/11. Others have lived in fear, experiencing unjust treatment for most of this country’s history. How can we ‘buy into’ the idea that we can dwell in the shelter and shadow of the Almighty, despite international terrorism, questionable financial security, wars and rumors of wars, religious and racial hatred, and the rampant fear and anxiety that have led to a myriad of addictions and dysfunctional behaviors?”
Can we take this invitation seriously? Well, let’s look at what the Psalmist says in detail.
The writer of this Psalm gives a number of images of what life is like for those who call on God and are in relationship with God. We dwell in the shelter of the Most High. We rest in the shadow of the Almighty. God serves as our fortress, our refuge, and our dwelling. All of these images imply an intimate, close relationship. We would not get so close to a God we didn’t trust. I sometimes imagine God as holding out his arms to me and holding me close. It’s like sitting in my dad’s lap. I was such a daddy’s girl; I sat in his lap until I was in junior high. There was no safer place I could imagine, and there was so much comfort in leaning my head on his chest and hearing his heartbeat beneath my ear. In the same way, God is pictured as the safest place we could ever be. It’s not so much that we dwell in God, as it is that God dwells in us.
The writer of the Psalm also gives us a list of the things God promises to do for us. God will see that no harm befalls us, that no disaster comes near us. God will send his angels to watch over us and to guard us, so that we don’t even stub our toe on a large rock. God promises to rescue us, to protect us, to be with us in trouble, to deliver and honor us and give us long life and eternal salvation, all because we love God and call upon him. Wow! That’s impressive!
But my skeptical self – and perhaps yours, as well – still wants to see this in action in the here and now. If God is going to rescue us, then how come it seems that we get stuck in hard times, that life beats us up and leaves us for dead by the side of the road? If God is going to protect us, then why do we get cancer and break our bones and have car accidents? If God is going to deliver us, then why doesn’t he hurry up and do it be-fore the world gets any more crazy and chaotic and confusing and dangerous?
The fact of the matter is that life can be hard sometimes. And God does not keep us from taking our share of the bad times. Christians, like unbelievers and outright heretics and atheists, are going to have good days and bad days, good years and bad years. We have financial struggles, we go through divorces, we lose those we love much too young, we get fired from our jobs, we experience all of the things that life has to offer, good and bad.
So what is the advantage of having faith in God, of calling out to him in our troubles and trials? Why bother with God if we still have to suffer sometimes?
Good questions. Let’s see if we can make some sense of it all.
First, the advantage of having faith in God and calling out to him is that we experience the presence of God with us in all things, in days of calm and days of chaos, in times of joy and times of grief and times of unimaginable fear and pain. God is with us. That was the meaning of Christ coming to this earth. God is with us in all things. We will not face the struggles alone, depending only on our own strength and wisdom, but we have God’s strength to fall back on. And I can tell you, when I’ve been at my lowest points I have always eventually felt God’s arms holding me and helping me to stand. Professor Amos wrote, “God dwells in our hearts. In times of trouble, joy, sickness, health, vibrancy, sadness, loneliness, and death, we have a divine friend who walks with us, cries with us, loves us with a continuing, deep, and abiding love.” That is worth everything in this life.
Second, the advantage of having faith in God and calling out to him is that God always answers. Those who have no faith can shout their questions out to the universe as loud as they want to, but they aren’t going to get any answers, at least none that satisfy. But when we cry out to God and ask questions, God will always answer. Sometimes the answer we get when we ask for something is “no.” Sometimes it is “wait.” Sometimes it is “I’ve got something else in mind for you.” When we wonder if life has any meaning or purpose, we find it in following the way of Jesus. That means what we do as much as it means what we believe. We may be changed by the hard times in life, but those times don’t have to define who we are.
And finally, God promises to show us the way of his salvation. That way was shown to us most clearly through Jesus Christ. The first name for the early followers of Jesus was The Way; it is a life to be lived, not a theology to be believed. Jesus also suffered in this life: he had a friend who denied him and another who betrayed him. Jesus lost friends to death that he loved and he wept at their graves. But Jesus also overcame that suffering, and the physical suffering of his arrest, punishment and crucifixion. And we can overcome our suffering through faith in God.
There are many stories I could tell you of those who have overcome by the power of God, the God who protected and sheltered and delivered them, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. But let me just choose this one.
I had a friend and colleague in South Carolina named April Hall. April was a year or two younger than me. We enjoyed getting together at district meetings when we served in the same district and always looked for each other at Annual Conference. One day April called me and asked to meet for lunch. I eagerly agreed to join her in a few days at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We got there and were seated and rushed to get caught up with how we had been since we last saw each other. Then April got a very serious expression on her face and said she had something to tell me. She had been diagnosed with MS a few months earlier. Wow. I never expected to hear that.
She had been experiencing symptoms for a while, but it takes a long time to diagnose MS. You kind of have to eliminate all the other things it could be. She was having some issues with balance and navigating stairs. I was so upset to hear how she had been having to deal with this life-changing diagnosis. But I was even more upset by how her congregation responded. They basically got angry at her, as if her illness was somehow something she had chosen. Her office was on the second floor of the church, and there was no elevator. She asked if she could take a Sunday School room on the first floor and just swap rooms with them. The church said, “No. The pastor’s office has always been on the second floor where it is now.” How compassionate. I was in a state of disbelief and anger. How could any church do that? What were they thinking?
Well, I gave April all the support I could. When the MS Walk came around, I recruited a team from my church, and we raised some money. And when April told me she had decided to leave parish ministry, I supported her in that, too. She was able to get a job back in her home state of Virginia as a pharmacy tech. She was going to live not far from her family, so she would have lots of emotional support, and physical support when it got to that point. I knew I would miss her – I did, so much – but I understood her decision.
The thing about April was that she never once complained about the fact that she had this horrible disease. She never asked, “Why me?” She always had an upbeat attitude, a smile on her face, and real joy in her heart. She knew that God was with her, that God would be with her on this journey that she never asked to take. She felt sheltered and protected and delivered and rescued. She knew that her home was in God and God had made his home in her. And that was enough.
I’ve always felt that we have a choice. We can choose to go through life as undergoers, people who see life as one problem after another, one hardship after another, one defeat after another. Or we can choose to live life as overcomers, who see life as one blessing after another, one experience of love and grace after another, one victory after another by the power of God. We can feel as if God has rejected us or turned away from us, or we can feel as if we are safe in God’s arms.
I have always loved Leslie Brandt’s paraphrase of Psalm 91, and I’d like to close with his words:
That one whose faith is focused on God, who finds his security in Him, does not have to live in fear.
He is not left untouched by the tempests of this life, and he may be wounded by the onslaughts of evil, but his great God does not leave him to suffer these things alone.
The Lord cares for His own and delivers him even in the midst of the conflicts that plague him.
God is truly your God, you do not have to be afraid of the enemy that threatens or the affliction that lays you low.
Men all about you may fall, never to rise again, but the Lord is by your side to raise you to your feet and to lead you to ultimate victory.
Our loving God has promised it: “Because my child loves Me, I will never let him go. I shall feel the pain of his wounds and bear his hurt and shall transform that which is ugly into that which enriches and blesses.
And when he cries out in agony, I shall hear and answer him.
I will be close to him and will deliver him, and I will grant him eternal life.”
