Читать книгу Reflections on the Psalms - Steven Croft - Страница 14

Lord, how many are my adversaries;many are they who rise up against me.

‘I lie down and sleep’ (v.5)

Our imaginations are imprinted for life by the stories and pictures we were introduced to as children. The stories of Helen Bannerman about various children in India were stories I loved, and I cannot read this psalm without seeing the image of a little girl called Quasha (this was my favourite story because her name was like mine!) lying on her stomach under a tree in the jungle and reading aloud a new book she has bought, while more and more tigers gather around her. Eventually every tiger in the jungle is there. The tigers do not eat her up immediately because the story is so entertaining and they want to hear the end. She’s oblivious to them.

Here, the hordes are encamped around the psalmist. There may be tens of thousands of them, but he is engrossed in something else: God. And absorbed in the worship of God, whom he recognizes as ‘his glory’, he is able to lie down and sleep. The difference between him and the little girl in the story is that he is not oblivious of anything; he is confident that he will ultimately be held even though his enemies set upon him. He is part of a bigger story than any their acts of violence can narrate. (The tigers discover something similar; they eventually set upon and destroy each other, but Quasha is saved by the book that rejoiced her heart.)

Reflection by Ben Quash

Refrain:

You, Lord, are a shield about me.

Prayer:

Shield us, Lord, from all evil,

and lift us from apathy and despair,

that even when we are terrified,

we may trust your power to save;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.