Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
Psalm 124 (NIV)
A song of ascents. Of David.
1 If the Lord had not been on our side—let Israel say— 2 if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, 3 they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; 4 the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, 5 the raging waters would have swept us away. 6 Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. 7 We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. 8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
Eugene Peterson writes: “The psalmist is not a person talking about the good life, how God has kept him from all difficulty” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p74). He is pointing out that the Bible is actually more human and more honest than we often think. Is it about God? Yes. But the people who wrote the Bible rarely held anything back and show real, raw human emotion and struggle. In Psalm 124 the hope is not just that God is bigger than the worst that life can throw at us, but that God actually cares enough to help us. And when we look to the cross we see God’s exclamation point. “Yes! I do care”. What are you holding back from God? Christian discipleship is laying our hearts and souls bare before God and seeking His help and salvation each and every day.