Our Rest In Distress

Our Rest In Distress

Psalm 61:1-4

Watch on YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mRq1IJqMao

There is a quote by Corrie ten Boom, whose family helped escaping Jews from the Holocaust, where she and her family were caught and sent to the prison camps. She wrote a best-selling biography years after her release, and in it she not only quoted what her sister said right before she died in the prison camp, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

But it was what Corrie said that is the basis of our study today. She said, “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God you’ll be at rest.” (Corrie ten Boom)

The other week I was picking up a prescription at Walgreens in Las Vegas and met a woman in line and we struck up a conversation. She lived for a while in Mesquite, but then had to return to Las Vegas for her mother’s health. When the pandemic hit, she lost her mother, sister, and another family member, along with both her dogs, and both her car and her mother’s car could no longer be fixed.

To say she was distressed would be an understatement. Now, at that time, giving her a lot of the Christian ease platitudes didn’t seem to fit. She just needed to be heard, and I asked if I could pray for her.

After this encounter I remembered a song that I heard Matthew Ward sing. He and his sisters formed the group “2ndChapter of Acts.” It was from Psalm 61:1-4.

Play Song by Matthew Ward

It is this Psalm, and these first four verses that I’d like to share with you so that we can find that rest in our times of distress. 

“Hear my cry, O God; attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For You have been a shelter for me, a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in Your tabernacle forever; I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.” (Psalm 61:1-4 NKJV)

David was a man that often found himself in trouble and in distress. Now, we’re not sure what prompted David to write this, many believe that it was at the time that his son, Absalom, rebelled and David had leave Jerusalem with his family and men just to survive.

Whatever the situation may have been, it was quite traumatic. Notice how he began. 

“Hear my cry, O God; attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed.” (Psalm 61:1-2a NKJV)

Now, starting out this way in his prayers wasn’t anything new. David often began asking, if not begging for God to hear his cry for help.

In Psalm 86 he starts by praying, “Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me … Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I cry to You all day long … Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications.” (Psalm 86: 1, 3, 6 NKJV)

And in Psalm 5:1-2 he said, “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Give heed to the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for to You I will pray.” (Psalm 5:1-2 NJKV)

And here’s my point in sharing this. God said that David was a man after His (God’s) own heart, and a man who would do God’s will (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). Yet here we see him crying out to God, if I could say it like this, for God to hear him, and pay attention to what was going on in his life.

And now notice now what he goes on to say after asking God to hear his cry. “From the ends of the earth I call to You.” Now, David hadn’t hopped on a ship like Jonah to go to what he was perceived the “ends of the earth.” In fact, what we know is that David never traveled far out of the Land of Israel.

So, what does he mean. This was often used as a metaphor for despair, or even when someone felt alienated from God. And while this is most probably the case with David, as it would be with us, I really think that David knew something more about God, that we often times forget, and that is that nothing could separate him from God, neither physically nor spiritually.

I find this reality in David’s life through the Psalm he wrote, Psalm 139.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalms 139:7-10 NKJV)