Sung in a Cave

"My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise."

David sang that in a cave. The heading of Psalm 57 places it at the time he fled from Saul in the cave, and 1 Samuel 24 tells of one such day. Saul "took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats." Then Saul walked into the very cave where David and his men were hiding in the dark along its sides. Nothing around him was settled. "My soul is among lions," David says, and "They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down."

The word "fixed" means set firmly in place and made ready. The same Hebrew root is used for a throne that is established and for a house that stands firm. So David is saying that his heart is fastened down while everything he can see is moving. And he says it twice in one breath, the way people repeat something they have decided to hold on to.

Then comes a line that most readers pass over, because it sounds like background: "Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early." David is making a plan for the morning. He names his instruments, and he names the hour. A man hiding in a cave, with an army out on the rocks, is deciding what the first thing tomorrow will be. He will praise God, because he is sure that "thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds."

You can do the same tonight, before you know how tomorrow will feel. Settle one small thing about your first ten minutes with God, and then put it where you cannot miss it: leave your Bible open on the table, or move the alarm across the room. In Psalm 57, a fixed heart is a heart that sets an alarm, and the God it wakes up to praise is the same God whose mercy reached David in the cave.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 92 is Called by Name (Isaiah 43:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two