When I Am Afraid

O Most High, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you. - Psalm 56:3 (NRSV)

 

“Maybe,” my friend said when we talked about Psalm 56. “When I’m afraid, maybe I put my trust in God. But,” she continued, “I usually trust my own devices and designs first. I worry. I toss and turn, trying to figure out things on my own. I perseverate and procrastinate. I eat.”

 

“Truth is,” she said, “when I’m under siege, I’ll do just about anything but trust in God.”

 

I’m grateful for my friend’s honesty. I think King David, to whom Psalm 56 was attributed, would have been grateful, too. According to tradition, David wrote it when imprisoned by the Philistines. Perhaps in that fearsome ordeal, David trusted God.

 

Yet often he didn’t. His fear drove him to war against his enemies, including King Saul and his own sons. Faced with Bathsheba’s pregnancy, he conspired in her husband’s death.

 

Ironically, this psalm offers the way out of fear. Whoever wrote it started by breaking the silence, telling God the truth about the fear, anger, and the besiegers: “They stir up strife; they lurk, they watch my steps.” The psalmist pled for help, and then he shifted focus from himself to God, the One to be trusted. The psalmist remembered his vows, gave thanks, and celebrated how God had “delivered my soul from death and my feet from falling” so he could “walk in the light of life.”

 

Breaking the silence, asking for help, giving thanks, remembering the covenant and God’s past deliverance from fear and falling. Maybe that’s the way out of fear and into trust. I’ll try it if you will.

 

Prayer

Thank you, God, for Psalm 56. Help us overcome our fear and find our way back to You. Amen.