A psalm of David, regarding his experience in the cave. A prayer.
1 I cry out to the Lord;
I plead for the Lord’s mercy.
2 I pour out my complaints before him
and tell him all my troubles.
3 When I am overwhelmed,
you alone know the way I should turn.
Wherever I go,
my enemies have set traps for me.
4 I look for someone to come and help me,
but no one gives me a passing thought!
No one will help me;
no one cares a bit what happens to me.
5 Then I pray to you, O Lord.
I say, “You are my place of refuge.
You are all I really want in life.
6 Hear my cry,
for I am very low.
Rescue me from my persecutors,
for they are too strong for me.
7 Bring me out of prison
so I can thank you.
The godly will crowd around me,
for you are good to me.”
I have been sitting in a black plastic garden chair for the past month or more each morning as I write and type the Psalms and my reflections on the Psalms. I was sitting in the armed chair we received with our dining room table more than 22 years ago as a gift from a doctor I don’t know if I ever met when I first moved to England from Michigan in March of 2001. I switched to this plastic garden chair because my back hurt in the other chair and since switching, I have had no back problems.
I have at my ready disposal various inexpensive pens I have bought along the way from Hema or Amazon searching for the right writing instrument for me to do what I am learning to love: starting each day with a time copying the Bible by hand. I have sought to revive and improve my cursive handwriting and to try my hand at simple hand lettering and now possibly calligraphy.
While I write and meditate and repeat the words from the Psalm I think of you and other friends and family and pray. I get up early because I need time. I am very slow and I like the quiet. I am easily distracted so the early morning really suits my chaotic brain and helps me discipline my thoughts.
This morning I wrote the majority of the Psalm with a glass dip pen from China and a little jar of ink from Germany. I drank a Columbian coffee and a Belgian water while reading from my American Bible. And I’m typing on a Japanese laptop with an azerty keyboard given by a Belgian friend who got it second hand from a European branch of an American company in Belgium. The coffee was a gift from my lovely wife of 39 years tomorrow.
My life is good. God is faithful and I am not being hunted down mercilessly by a demon possessed royal bent on my death. David was not in such a comfortable position as I am. But I have felt alone before, not today, but sometimes I have. Last night I was with my church men's group playing pool and mostly talking about our group and the future and reflecting on the past season of being a group.
I see a few contradictions in what David emotionally writes.
No one will help me;
no one cares a bit what happens to me. v4
The godly will crowd around me v7
In 1 Samuel 22:1-2, 24:3 we read a bit more information about this cave experience which the title tells us is the circumstance of David writing this Psalm. David was surrounded by 400 men. Maybe not at the moment he was hiding in the cave, but there were some men with him because 1 Samuel 24:3 says, “David and his men were hiding farther back in that very cave!”
David was obviously not alone; people were flocking to him and risking their lives for him (Don’t miss the story in 2 Samuel 23:16). David himself admits this in verse seven.
Psalm 142 has a few of these very creative and picturesque word images. He feels all alone but is crowded into a cave with his friends.
Imagine the conflict of feeling and fear in David’s mind at this time. He is like a rat in a trap if he and his men are found in this cave. And the very person looking for him is squatting close enough for David to crawl up to his robe. David’s men want him to kill Saul. I feel the tables turning back around and around. Running away, then trapped in a cave, a cave that then seems a refuge--only to once again be trapped. But then to be dealt the opportunity to end the running. . . and then giving that opportunity up! No wonder he is friendless. These guys were risking their lives running around with David. Any one of them could have probably bought their own pardon and freedom and been rewarded with riches by taking David themselves to Saul. So when David has Saul in a very vulnerable position and he passes up the opportunity, though he might have been in a crowded cave surrounded by fellow mercenaries, he has probably just become unpopular.
Why would David do such a thing? Because of God and his respect for God’s ways.
Often in life, if we go God’s way, we will become unpopular and then we will feel alone. But if we focus on God Himself and not just the way He has called us to go, then we will feel close to God.
David understood that only God could free his mind and heart. The traps he faced were not only set by Saul but also by his mighty men. The advice we get from others we trust may not be what God wants for us.
When I am overwhelmed,
you alone know the way I should turn. v3
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.
If you are astute you will know where I am going. I’m going to go to THE way. To the only one who perfectly knows the way. To the one who, when He was cornered in the garden while praying, also took the unpopular path God had laid out for Him. Jesus is the way. Jesus went the way of the cross and all His friends ran away and even denied they knew Him.
At the moment Judas is kissing Him, His friends are ready to fight, but as soon as Jesus takes the path chosen by His Father, He is alone. And at this time He is so low that He has just told His friends He feels like He is going to die.
"He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
David was in a cave. Usually a pretty low place. I tell people that caves can never get better. The sun will never shine, the temperature will not get warmer, you could fall further, you could lose your way, you could lose your light, you could have a flood rush into the cave. Caves are low places. And you will feel low if you think you are trapped in one.
Hear my cry, for I am very low. v6
Jesus knows this even better than David. David didn’t die in the cave. Jesus laid in a cave stone cold dead after a terrible beating and process of dying. Can you get any lower? He had been the highest being in the universe and now He is three days dead.
What a cry it must be that Jesus is calling out to the Father. What a cry the Father must have had in remorse and grief for losing His Son. What deep sadness. Brother and sister, you can’t get so low that Jesus doesn’t know. You might think, yeah but He was sinless and I am covered in the slimy filth of sin, stuck in the mire of all that traps us. Jesus carried all that hideous, stinking, putrid stench of death and wretched evil and all that for all us vile people in the world.
But as verse 7 ends this Psalm, so we know it is the life beyond the grave that gives David and Jesus hope.
Hope is knowing God can rescue you no matter what. He can reach you no matter how bad it is.
“We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.”
Put your hope in Jesus. He knows what you are going through and He will not leave you without a way to escape.
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| Handwritten Psalm 142 |
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