Psalm 109 – Faith During False Accusation

There’s a method for living life when things get tough, and we know it’s not about giving up. And no matter what life throws at us, from the numbness of loss, to being overwhelmed by the sheer load of things, we can learn so much from the psalmist (‘of David’) in this Psalm, about the faith to hold on in the midst of tyranny. Maybe the toughest of situations is handled here; to be falsely accused, and for that accuser, the one responsible for great travesties, to be calling for our demise on every angle.

Despite the quaking and polarising injustice, the psalmist painstakingly charts the accusations, much like in a court. In spite of it all, though, including the raw clarity of spiritual pain, his faith remains firm:

“Help me, O Lord my God!

Save me according to your steadfast love.”

~Psalm 109:26 (NRSV)

When The Curses Pile Up

Just about every conceivable curse is called against the psalmist in a middle part of the Psalm, and to place ourselves in it, as the accused, is more than humbling; it’s a threat against our life and all we hold dear. To lose everything, in the type of circumstances that Job endured, is what we can imagine if the accuser was to get his way. This is scary!

And though, at one level, rarely does it occur that a person is blighted in so many dimensions at once, it takes just one dimension of our lives to be upended for us to lose our way; to feel perplexed and cursed beyond measure.

When the curses pile up we have the choice to continue in our misery, focusing on the hellishness of it all, or we can repetitively turn and, in going about-face, we look to the heavens, and say, ‘What now, God?’ ‘Whatever you ask, I will do.’

Remembering That God Has Promised To Bless Those Who Obey

Looking to the heavens instead of looking all about us at what’s going wrong, and having faith in that which we cannot yet see, abides by the rationale that if we act in faith, blessing will come.

This can sound like Christian rhetoric; but that’s faith—to believe, without sight, in a way choosing to see that all we suffer will be worth it in the end. A real faith is required; the type of belief that learns to quickly get past disappointment and resentment and the focus on the negative. Quickly we look to the things God’s already doing—not for us, maybe, but in the midst of others’ lives that are being delivered. Our turn’s coming.

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Whatever we’re confronted with we can always take some small comfort in the fact that others have had it worse. Enormous have been the barriers that the faithful have conquered in the name of their God. When we hold on in faith blessing is the eventual consequence.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.