SEPTEMBER 10, 2015
Holding Me Up
I am
the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not
fear; I will help you. — Isaiah 41:13
Read:
Psalm
34:1-7
After I no longer went
on family road trips with my parents, it became a rare occasion to visit my
grandparents who lived hundreds of miles away from us. So one year, I decided
to fly to visit them in the small town of Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin, for a long
weekend. As we drove to the airport for my return flight, Grandma, who had
never flown, began to express her fears to me: “That was such a small plane you
flew on . . . . There’s nothing really holding you up there, is there? . . . I
would be so afraid to go up that high.”
By the time I boarded
the small aircraft, I was as fearful as the first time I had flown. What
exactly is holding up this plane, anyway?
Irrational fears, or
even legitimate ones, don’t need to terrify us. David lived as a fugitive,
afraid of King Saul who relentlessly pursued him because he was jealous of
David’s popularity with the people. David found true solace and comfort only in
his relationship with God. In Psalm 34 he wrote: “I sought the Lord, and he
answered me; he delivered me from all my fears” (v. 4).
Our Father in heaven
is all-wise and all-loving. When fear starts to overwhelm us, we need to stop
and remember that He is our God and He will always hold us up.
My fears sometimes
overwhelm me, Father. Yet I know that You are here with me. May Your perfect
love cast out my fear and still my troubled heart!
When we believe that God is good, we can learn to release our
fears.
INSIGHT:
The superscription to Psalm 34 gives the
occasion for David writing this song of deliverance. While a fugitive from the
jealous King Saul, David foolishly took refuge in the Philistine territory of
Gath (1 Sam. 21:10-15). This was a dangerous thing to do because Gath was the
hometown of Goliath (17:23). When the Philistines realized that David was the
Jew who had slain their champion Goliath, they captured him (21:11,13). Aware
that his life was now in danger, David feigned insanity and the ploy succeeded
for he was released and made his escape. In response to God’s deliverance,
David wrote, “I sought the Lord, and he answered me” (Ps. 34:4). Sim Kay Tee
Source: Our Daily Bread 2015
