Refuge and Fortress

A man sits in his car in the hospital car park with the engine off, and before he opens the door he says one sentence to himself that nobody else will ever hear.

That is the move this psalm opens with, and it is worth noticing that it is a decision rather than a feeling. I will say of the LORD. Not I feel, not I have been reassured. He is choosing a sentence and putting it into the air, whether or not the day gives him grounds for it.

Then look at the two words he chooses, because they do different jobs. A refuge is a shelter you run into when the weather turns; the Hebrew is the word for the place you get out of a storm. A fortress is a stronghold on high ground, a fixed position with walls, and it is a word from David's fugitive years, the crags around En Gedi where a hunted man could stand and not be reached. One is retreat and one is defence. He wants both in the sentence, because trouble comes in both shapes.

And then the smallest word does the heaviest lifting. My God. Not a general truth about the existence of shelter. A claim of possession made by a man who is not, at that moment, safe.

So speak it before the hard thing rather than afterwards. In the car park, on the stairs, in the corridor. Your circumstances get a vote on how you feel about the day. They do not get to write down what you say about God.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 323 is All This Assembly (1 Samuel 17:47).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna