As usual, here is my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1Judge me, O God.
Plead my cause against an unloving nation. Against a man of deceit and
injustice deliver me, 2because You [are] the God of my
fortress. Why do You reject me? Why do I
walk to and fro mourning in oppression of a hostile one?
3Send forth Your
light and Your truth. Let them guide me. Let them bring me to the mountain of
Your holiness and to Your dwelling places.
What a verse (3,
that is). Eleven words in the Hebrew original exploding with galaxies of hope
and peace and strength. I think I could type on for hours. Where do I even
begin? Hmmmm. Maria and the children sing, “Let’s begin at the very beginning.
It’s a very good place to start!”
Seriously, let’s
begin at the very beginning. And what does it say?
"Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and
the morning were the first day." (Gen. 1:3-5).
Our glorious God has been sending forth light and dispelling
darkness for a very long time! And though light vs. darkness means nothing to
Him (Ps. 139:11,12) , in His love He knows they are literally “night and day”
to us. He Himself of course is “the Light of the world” and in His heaven “The
city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God
gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:23).
Charles Wesley captured the intensely personal meaning of
God’s light in his old hymn, “And Can It Be?”:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in
sin and nature’s night,
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke,
the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee!
“Light and darkness” is one of the enormous and fundamental fractals
of our created existence. The good guys
dress in white; the bad guys in black. Bright sunshine is cheery and healthful;
darkness is gloomy and dank. When I don’t know, I’m “in the dark;” when I
figure it out “the lights come on!” In bright light I can see even minute
details; in the darkness we’ll run into a wall. I have noticed for years that
this contrast of light vs. darkness is a constantly recurring theme in the
Bible. Once I set about to study it, then realized it was way too big a subject
to even try to address with a single study. Now I know that is because it is a fractal.
It is a pattern which bears upon our lives in a million different ways on a
million different scales, but always that same pattern: light is good/ darkness
usually bad.
And so, in our passage, the Psalmist pleads the Lord to “send
forth Your light!”
Well would we pray that. Back in Psalm 36:9, David said, “In
Your light, we see light.”
It is always true
that we need God’s light to walk by. I need His truth to be “a lamp to my feet
and a light for my path” (Ps 119:105); but we acutely need His light during
those times of trial and trouble. Here in our Psalm, we’re dealing with those
situations where we feel we are being unjustly mistreated, when others or even
someone in particular is inflicting some misery into our life. How should I
respond? Should I try to defend myself? Do I need to? How do I get this anger
and hatred out of my heart? How can I return good for their evil? How can I
even make myself want to? Why is the Lord allowing this? When will it end?
In all this confusion and emotion, we can pray, “Lord, send
forth Your light!”
I have found over the years that at those times my evil
heart doesn’t want to pray those words because way down deep I doubt it will do
any good. My evil heart can’t imagine how God could send any light, so it persuades me, “Why bother?”
But when I gather up my faith and pray it anyway, it has
always amazed me how He has, in fact, answered. I like Micah’s retort to his
evil heart, “Rejoice not against me, my
enemy, when I fall, for I shall arise; and when I sit in darkness, the Lord
will be a light unto me” (Micah 7:8). Notice those words: “…for I shall
arise; and when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light unto me.” Those are
faith words and good medicine for believing hearts.
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