Psalm 31:7,8 – “Rememberer”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷I will rejoice and be glad in Your love for You saw my misery. You knew the troubles of my soul, ⁸and You did not deliver me into a hand of an enemy. You set my feet in a spacious place.

Wow did this passage minister to me this week! As I started the week, I was facing several very ugly situations at work. I was expected to oversee the startup of a wastewater treatment plant I didn’t design and in a community where the current administration doesn’t even want it to run. That same community wanted me to attend a meeting with them on Wednesday evening where we expected to be drilled with hard questions from an antagonistic group. And as soon as that meeting was over, I would be expected to attend a Board meeting in another community where apparently there was considerable opposition going on. Beyond that, another community would be receiving bids on a job I feared would come in hopelessly over budget. And there was more.

So as I sat reading this passage with all of that before me, things looked pretty bleak. I basically just sat for a long time with Psalm 31 open in front of me praying through its thoughts and promises.

And what wonderful thoughts and promises they are!

“I will be glad and rejoice in Your love...” Words fail to express the profound comfort it is to live loved. What an unfathomable joy it is to know this God who loves me – always, no matter what, even though I fail Him constantly. People turn Christianity into all sorts of other things, especially a “religion” of rule-keeping, or a system of “beliefs,” etc. But I have learned it is none of the above, but rather it is an intensely personal and constant love-relationship between me and this God who loved me and gave Himself for me. And as I sat under the specter of this week of horrors, I knew somehow, someway He would love me through it all.

“… for You saw my misery. You knew the troubles of my soul,” He knows. The God of the Universe knows. He sees it all. Maybe no one else is even aware of what I’m up against or how scared I am or how much I’m dreading the week before me. But God does. He knows.

It’s interesting too that this is written in what is most naturally a past tense. Hebrew doesn’t really have “tenses” as we know them in English, so I can’t camp too hard on this point, but, if in fact David is speaking in a past tense, what he’s doing is reminding himself that he’s been here before. He’s been here before and what did he find then? That the Lord knew. “Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.” The older we get as believers the larger and larger becomes our bank of memories of all the times we’ve been here before, of all the times we faced seemingly impossible challenges, only to see our wonderful Lord intervene and turn it all to our good.

In around 1900, William Nicoll recorded the words: “Trust should not be hard to those who can remember.”

Yes. We’ve been here before and the plain simple undeniable fact is that the Lord has been good. He is faithful. He’s always come through somehow, some way. He has “dealt  bountifully” with me and I can be certain He will do so again. In another place, David said, “I will recall the years of the Most High.” Same thing. Encouraging himself by remembering how good the Lord has always been in the past.

One of my favorite memories to bring up is when Sennacherib had surrounded Jerusalem. Hezekiah took the message of his threats to the temple and “spread them out before the Lord.” It was an absolutely impossible situation and one of intense fear. The Assyrians were perhaps the most cruel people who ever lived. When they conquered a city they made a sport of torturing its people to death, impaling them on poles to watch them die, skinning them alive, and many other unthinkably merciless cruelties.

And what happened? “That night the Angel of the Lord slew 185,000 of the Assyrians” and they packed their bags and high-tailed it back to Nineveh, where Sennacherib’s own sons murdered him even as he was worshipping his god.

 “Trust should not be hard to those who can remember.” “… for You saw my misery. You knew the troubles of my soul,” He knows.

As in Hezekiah’s case, “You did not deliver me into a hand of an enemy” and “You set my feet in a spacious place.” It is the enemy I’m facing. In every community the devil is doing his murderous work, sowing discord and seeking to utterly discourage people, to turn them on each other and leave them hopeless. But I go to work every morning knowing that I serve the God who loves people, who wants to do them good, who wants them to be able to live “peaceable, quiet lives.”

I knew going into this week, that was exactly the battle I faced, and, like He always does, the Lord proved true to His Word. He did not let the enemy prevail and instead “set my feet in a spacious place.” As I worked through the startup of that plant I did not design, the Lord helped me to understand it, so I really was able to help them start it up. For the better part of two days we worked through all the various issues and I tried to listen attentively and understandingly to the community’s objections and worries and fears. I went to the meeting with them where we expected to get peppered with hard questions and the Lord instead turned it into a very encouraging meeting, where one man even stood up and commended the community for the work they’ve done. By that point, they had actually begun to believe I really was there to help them and they went away actually encouraged and hopeful that things are going in a very good direction!

Then I went on to the Board meeting with the community where there was considerable opposition going on. As those people raised their objections and asked their questions, the Lord enabled me to calmly, kindly, confidently answer every single question. By the time they were done, they all looked at each other and said, “We see no reason to put this off any longer,” and voted unanimously to move ahead.

My community receiving bids where I feared they’d come in hopelessly over budget actually got worse before it got better. Right at 5:00 the evening before, I got a call that left us all feeling this would turn into a complete debacle the next morning. Knowing the Lord was in it and would somehow do us all good, I just encouraged everyone to “let the chips fall” and when they do, “we’ll pick up the pieces however we have to.” Friday morning, instead of a complete debacle, the bids came in just under the budget and looking very much like the Village can not only do what they originally planned but actually much more!

And so the week ended not at all as I feared, but with the Lord doing great things encouraging people, pulling them together, and making them hopeful!

Instead of delivering me into the hand of the enemy (where he would crush the very life out of me), the Lord brought me out into this spacious place of hope and possibilities!

I like something else Nicoll said, “ … They who are enclosed in God’s hand have ample room there; and unhindered activity, with the ennobling consciousness of freedom, is the reward of trust.”

“Trust should not be hard to those who can remember.”

Yes. “I will rejoice and be glad in Your love.” This coming week brings with it a whole new array of challenges, fears, and threats. Even as I face each one, may I be rejoicing and being glad in Your love. May I be a good rememberer!