Voices in the Night

"I lay down and slept; I woke again for the LORD sustained me."- Psalm 3:5

David sets this line down in the middle of his Psalm like an anchor, a turning point in his thinking.  Early in the Psalm, he's crying out to God saying that his enemies taunt him with "there is no salvation for him in God."

I don't have literal enemies taunting and threatening me, yet at night all-to familiar voices come marauding.  And one of the loud ones, one that I've been trying to stifle for decades, is that God can't save.  I know he can intellectually and that he's done so historically in Christ, but what about finances, what about my poor parenting today, what about all these flaws in character that cling so leech-like as I turn out the light. Where is God on nights like these?  Will he save?

As a child, I remember running to my parents a lot in the night.  I don't think it was usually nightmares, though they may have played into it, but just plain old fear.  I vaguely remember just being unhappy, not wanting to go to school the next day, worrying about some homework I might have missed. A sheen of fear lay over whatever it was I faced distorting it. 

While the problems have changed the feelings that comes out at night are the same. The unsolvable riddles of being frail and fallen are like a tether on a boat I forgot to unknot, holding me to the dock of all that is wrong in my life. And like a hissed whisper, I seem to hear, "You'll never find the right job, you'll never be a good father, you'll never get yourself together, you are too lazy, too selfish, too vain, too greedy, there is no salvation for you in God." The night sucks sometimes.

David felt this. He records his night wrestlings all through the Psalms.  But he finds an aid for sound sleep. Not alcohol, though I wouldn't rule out a bit of wine.  And it's not the fact that he's brave warrior, a genius word-smith, or any other quality he finds for rest, he calls to God. Scratch what I said earlier, the turning point, what enables him to lie down and sleep are these words, "But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill."

David finds comfort in God's protection because he looks back at God's history in his life.  Heck, he's still laying there when in reality he should probably be dead at the hands of Saul. He sees that he'll wake, because he's being sustained, watched over and guarded. 

Then David goes on to write about how God's going to break the teeth of his enemies. Maybe David had the same dream I have where my teeth are cracking and falling out of my mouth.

What's with that dream anyway?  A hold-over from loosing teeth as kids? Or just the fact that a lot of us snuck to bed with candy. Either way, I'm glad its not me getting my teeth kicked in.