Sunday Morning Meds--Deliverance

They spread a net for my feet—

I was bowed down in distress.  

They dug a pit in my path—

but they have fallen into it themselves. Psalm 57

A couple of thugs walk into a convenience store.  They threaten the attendant, and while one of them, the guy, is helping himself to the bucks in the till, his sidekick—probably girlfriend—spots a contest entry blank form, fills it out, dreaming of winning.  They leave, but the form she leaves behind lists her name, address and phone number.  Didn’t take cops long to get to their apartment.

A bank robber out east created a standard M.O.  He’d lug a bag into the bank, claim it was a bomb, clean out cash drawers, then leave the bag—telling the cashiers it was going to go off.  The bags he used were often filled with books—I don’t know if one of mine was among them. His undoing came when he left a phone book in one of those bags, a book he’d been mailed, complete with his address.  Jig was up.

Whether David might have been chuckling a bit when he thought of the cartoon irony he’s drawing here isn’t recorded, probably not.  The first half of verse six recounts his deep distress—“I was bowed down.”  But there is a kind of keystone cops act to what he describes—those enemies plotting and scheming, only, like dunces, to fall victim to their own nastiness.  What happens when evil turns inside out can be a hoot.

When things like that happen, people occasionally utter profound theological truths:  “Aha, there is a God.”  When sinners get theirs, especially when the “getting” is done at their own hands, all seems right with the world. Chaos is flouted, righteousness reigns.  The tunes we hear in the air is the music of the spheres.

Psalm 57 could hardly have been written in the middle of the drama. It feels like a camp testimony, really.  David’s opening-line distress—“have mercy, have mercy”—is short-lived, it seems. In verse four he documents the evil character of King’s posse, but the utter anguish of that first line soon seems not to have been utter at all. 

Here in verse six we get the whole story, which means the heart-felt cries of the first verse are already behind us. What happened that day tested him, he says—or sings—but that anguish soared into triumph when the dolts became the victims of their own dingy treacherousness.

We feel a peculiar joy when providence simply takes control. David’s deliverance isn’t as hard-fought here as it sometimes is.  This time, he barely had to lift a hand—or that’s what he tells us.

King Saul’s boys dug a pit into which they fell, headlong. What a riot.

God did it.  The whole thing.  It’s worth a chuckle to be attendant to his antic choreography. 

May his name be praised—and that’s David’s testimony.

Guy with a shotgun comes after the owner of a Chev Camaro, wanting the vehicle.  The owner gets out, scared, and the car thief gets in, grabs the keys, then realizes he can’t drive a stick shift. 

Feels so good when all is right in the world.  Bless His name.