Deliver Me

 

If you live in this world, you have a calling - to find some way to function with the other people who live in this world. The challenge is that some of them - God bless them - are never happy unless they are stirring something up. Then, they are not really happy, just less unhappy.

Their words are sharp. Their demeanor is critical. Sometimes, their ways are violent physically, emotionally, or in some other subtle ways.

Sometimes, their subtle or organized schemes threaten our welfare. Sometimes they plot against us.

Even paranoids sometimes have real enemies --- or so the saying goes.

God reminds our hearts that:

" ''I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence.''

Whether you must rub shoulders with the aggressive or the passive aggressive souls of the earth, you are not the first and you are not the last. The psalmist's enemies were personal and institutional forces that figuratively and literally attacked and threatened.

So, if you went to congregational worship on a Sabbath in days of old, you might have prayed this hymn of heart-cry, expressing a common condition and longing:

"Deliver me, O LORD, from evil men;
preserve me from violent men,
who plan evil things in their heart
and stir up wars continually.
They make their tongue sharp as a serpent's,
and under their lips is the venom of asps. Selah''
''Guard me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
preserve me from violent men,
who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;
beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah''
''I say to the LORD, You are my God;
give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O LORD!
O LORD, my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
you have covered my head in the day of battle.
Grant not, O LORD, the desires of the wicked;
do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted! Selah''
''As for the head of those who surround me,
let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them!
Let burning coals fall upon them!
Let them be cast into fire,
into miry pits, no more to rise!
Let not the slanderer be established in the land;
let evil hunt down the violent man speedily!''
''I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence.''
(Psalm 140 ESV)