SDfAoWOP: a Shield

Day Twenty-Seven

Psalm 3

1 O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;

2 many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. Selah

3 But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

David is old and tired. His many sins are gathering themselves together like a storm. He has let the multitude of his children do whatever they want and their wants, their desires have been murder, betrayal, rape and sedition. They neither know God nor love him. Absalom, at the center of intrigue and treason, has David on the run, fleeing out of the city, as one cursed. And so, as he has done at each and every point of trouble and sorrow, because his heart is 'after God', David turns his weak head and weary heart to The Lord.

The Lord, he says, is a shield, a support, a protection. In the very middle of grief and danger, David finds himself shielded by The Lord, covered, protected.

The Lord is the lifter of my head, he says. Though I am bowed down and broken, he lifts my head to glory.

Whatever anyone says–oh, it's going to turn out badly for you; oh, I don't know why you're leaning on the crutch of belief: oh, you are an offense and a byword–whatever anyone says cannot equal or nullify the protecting shield of God's power, the greet lifting up of his love.