She defined her life by her enemies. And I watched her move from one to the next and the next. As her pastor, I had a front row seat to it all.
First, there were her adopted daughters. Ungrateful, so it seemed, they fled her home when they were able, getting as far away as possible.
Next, I saw her take on her aging, stroke-slowed mother. She started out so sweetly, slowly expressing her hurt as she tried to pull me to her side against her mother. She seemed to have a good case.
Once her mother died, she moved on to her siblings. Again, she seemed to have a good case against them. And she seemed so vulnerable and trusting as she laid it all out.
After feuding with her siblings grew stale, she moved on to her husband. And yet again, I heard heartfelt complaints of deep wounds and it all sounded so true and so unjust.
But once she divorced her husband, she turned on me. For the next three years, I became the source of evil in her life. I was the demon to be exorcised. And I kept thinking to myself, “I should have seen this coming. How did I not know that I’d be on her enemy list?”
People who look for enemies become enemies. They become the very thing they see in others.
There are times in our lives when we turn people into problems, into enemies. We see them as obstacles, keeping us from our goals. We see them as competitors, taking what would otherwise be ours. We see them as tormentors, making our lives miserable.
Whenever I turn a person into a problem, I myself have become the problem. I no longer treat the person as a person to be related with, but as a problem to be dealt with. When I do that, I turn the other person into an enemy. And when I’ve done that, what have I become? Their enemy.
We can do our best to continue treating people as people, not as problems, but we can’t make them do the same. There are times when other people treat us as problems and become enemies to us. The Psalms give us a number of prayers that arise from this situation.
Psalm 56 is one of these. It takes place in one of the most vulnerable times in David’s often-vulnerable life. He’s caught in the pincers of King Saul and the Philistines. These two competing forces have David in between them and threaten to crush him.
Now, David had been a bit reckless and cocky in the years after killing the giant Goliath. He knew he’d been anointed as Israel’s next king and he acted like it. Sensing this, Saul turned him into a rival, a problem, an enemy. As always happens when one person turns another into an enemy, their relationship deteriorated and David had to flee for his life.
But where does one go when fleeing from the king of Israel? Rather than heading to Edom, where he had relatives and where he eventually sent his family for safe keeping, he hid out among Israel’s worst enemies. He hid out among the Philistines, the people he’d defeated when he’d killed their giant. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire!
David sought refuge among the Philistines twice in his life. The second time had its difficulties (1 Sam. 27-30). But the first time was a fiasco (1 Sam. 21:10-15).
During that first episode, the Philistines recognize David as the greatest general of Israel, killer of countless Philistine soldiers. His cover blown, David feigns madness. He drools into his beard and wipes feces on the city gates. The ploy works and they run him out of town. It’s one of those biblical stories I wish we had more details about. We don’t. But what we do have is a prayer which is preceded by these words: “Of David. A mitkam. When the Philistines had seized him in Gath.”
It begins with a cry for help.
Be merciful to me, my God,
for my enemies are in hot pursuit;
all day long they press their attack.
My adversaries pursue me all day long;
in their pride many are attacking me (Ps. 56:1-2).
Two pairings of pursuit and attack bring to mind King Saul’s attempts to track down his renegade general David. The double mentions of “all day long” highlight the relentlessness of it all and the anxiety it has caused David as he isn’t able to rest as he keeps one step ahead of his dogged pursuers.
The pride of the pursuers is in contrast to the mercy of God on which he relies.
Pride is a life turned in on itself. It’s a self-life that leads to the implosion of sin. Mercy, on the other hand, is a deep affection turned outward toward the loved one. It compels action on behalf of the beloved.
It’s this mercy which elicits trust.
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise —
in God I trust and am not afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me? (Ps. 56:3-4)
Mere mortals threaten David’s life and they have the power to snuff it out with a puff of air. At least, that’s how it would seem to a man on the run. But David knows better. Or at least, David believes better.
He knows the Scriptures. He knows the Torah with its stories of deliverance from the greatest power in the world. He knows its Law, which calls for a wise and compassionate life that matches God’s wise and compassionate love for his people. These stories of love in action and these descriptions of the character of love in action lead David to praise. They inspire trust when fear rises up inside him.
Having declared his trust, he returns to his circumstance.
All day long they twist my words;
all their schemes are for my ruin.
They conspire, they lurk,
they watch my steps,
hoping to take my life.
Because of their wickedness do not let them escape;
in your anger, God, bring the nations down (Ps. 56:5-7).
While the schemes and conspiracies seem to reflect Saul’s advisors who are jealous of David and want to do him in, the reference to the “nations” is to the Philistines. Here is the pincer in action. People at home in Israel are out to get him and people in his current situation among the Philistines are out to get him.
It’s one thing to run from one enemy. It’s another to be squeezed between two. In my experience, hostility on just one front is a rarity. The squeeze seems to be far more normal.
Thankfully, it’s not just the haters who focus on us. God is paying close attention. Far closer than we imagine when in the thick of it.
Record my misery;
list my tears on your scroll —
are they not in your record?
Then my enemies will turn back
when I call for help.
By this I will know that God is for me (Ps. 56:8-9).
David wants an accountant. He wants God to use a spreadsheet to make sure not a single sorrow is felt, not a single tear is shed without being recorded.
What sounds like self-pity is a desire to be fully known.
Suffering can be one of the most isolating of experiences. But if God is paying an exacting attention to the details of our lives and particularly the painful ones, then that isolation is blasted apart. We are befriended in the very middle of our misery.
In God, whose word I praise,
in the LORD, whose word I praise —
in God I trust and am not afraid.
What can man do to me? (Ps. 56:10-11)
Generally, the psalmists who pray in the middle of their miseries end with looking forward to a day when they will praise God again. And in verse 12, David looks forward to presenting his thank offerings when he is back in Jerusalem. But in verse 10, he’s already begun to worship.
His confidence in the eventual intervention and salvation by God has brought future praise into the present moment, making him something of a time traveler.
We don’t need to get stuck in a moment. We have these incredible minds with imaginations that aren’t limited by current circumstances. Too often, we envision fear-fueled darker futures for ourselves and those we love. But an imagination filled with God has a far better option: a future filled with deliverance that pulls tomorrow’s praise into today.
As he did earlier in the psalm, David again contrasts trust and fear, choosing trust over fear. And again, he questions the ability of humans to harm him when God is with him. This is bold imagining that flies in the face of all the visible evidence laid out in front of him. But, again, it’s based on what God has said and done in the past, “whose word I praise.”
I am under vows to you, my God;
I will present my thank offerings to you.
For you have delivered me from death
and my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before God
in the light of life (Ps. 56:12-13).
Having called on God and struggled with haters all around and having chosen trust over fear, David finds himself delivered from death. God has heard. God has entered every sorrow into his spreadsheet. God has acted. And David finds himself walking in God’s presence, breathing freely with the light of life sparkling in his eyes.
The haters no longer fill his imagination. God has filled it so completely that the haters no longer get a mention. This is how we know if we’re the person creating the problem or not.