Sleep-Stealers

Psalm 27

What keeps you awake at night? Is it financial worries? Perhaps you are anxious about what the next day holds for your family. Are you uncertain about your relationship with your spouse, your children, your extended family? Perhaps you are worried about whether or not you are adequately prepared for whatever life might bring. Maybe it’s just indigestion?

The psalmist lists several types of circumstances that might keep even the strongest among us awake at night. ‘Evildoers,’ ‘foes and enemies,’ an ‘army,’ ‘war,’ ‘adversity,’ abandonment, ‘adversaries,’ and ‘false witnesses.’ Somewhere on this list all of us can identify something that causes anxiety and stress in our lives.

When we are threatened by any of the circumstances the psalmist mentions we do have a choice. Our instinct is to hide, to run, to avoid the challenge. Since the Fall even when God seeks after humans, their response is to hide!

What if instead of hiding we acted as the psalmist suggests: seek the light of God’s presence – the One who is with us in the valley of the shadow of death? What if we placed our circumstances in God’s hands – the One who is an impenetrable fortress and stronghold? What if we turned our eyes off the problem and onto the source of all solutions – the One who is capable of meeting all our needs according to the riches of His grace in Jesus Christ? What if we looked past the present and saw the ultimate promise of God – a new heaven and a new earth, filled with abundant resources for all of life, a place where God’s presence is not just claimed by faith but evident by sight?

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and courageous. Wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14, HCSB)