The Enemy

Psalm 60

There is familiar territory, like your back yard, where the only danger might be insufficient sunscreen applied. There may be a stretch of road you travel so much you know every bend, every clump of trees, every sign. And yet we know that serious accidents happen at home, and vehicle collisions are most likely to happen where we travel most. (I like the guy who heard that most accidents happen with five blocks of home, so he moved.)

Then there are places that obviously are dangerous, but which most of us don’t have to experience, like Afghanistan and Iraq.

In this Psalm, the people have experienced danger, and defeat, in familiar territory. People in that part of the world still do. Funny, we think and pray – as of course well we should – of people from ‘our’ part of the world serving in danger zones, be we (or maybe I should speak for myself) tend to ignore what it must be like for people who live with constant danger right where they live.

The way we use the Psalms in devotion and worship might lead us actually to miss the kind of environment from which they come, which was often brutal. In this psalm the poet reflects on a defeat or severe trial his people have known (verses 1-3). He also reflects on the sovereignty of the land in which they have this experience: it belongs to the Lord. Words from the Lord compare parts of the land to familiar belongings. Towns and valleys and such are as familir to the Lord as it is as familiar to him as would the washbasin or sandals of the poet be to him.

So, the poet sees the answer for dealing with life in this land as putting his trust in the one who knows it, oversees it, even made it – and promised it to the Psalmist’s people. This gives rise to the kind of confident expression found in verses 4 and 5.

Still, actual experience leads to some hesitation on the poet’s part – in the form of the kind of “what if” question even the most faithful of us sometimes ask (see verse 10): What if God isn’t really for me? Having got the question out there, however, he moves right on, as should we. What other hope is there but in the one who is in charge of all things? You might see this as a bit lame – it’s not much of a faith that trusts in a deity because there is basically no alternative. This is to underestimate the dynamics of faith that is real faith – that genuinely trusts. Even Jesus, who knew exactly what was what, had an immense struggle in his trial of trials.

In the end, this Psalm may be about trampling down the enemy (verse 12b) of doubt. Move forward today not saying, “OK, God, if you’re there I hope you’ll help me,” but rather, “With God I (we) will gain the victory” (verse 12a).

Prayer:
Lord, I look forward to the victory you have in mind for me today, for your sake. Amen.