Walk Of Life – Day 31, January 2023 – Thoughts From The Book Of Psalms

Psalm 124 – LORD Is On Your Side

This Song of Ascents is written by David who gave thanks to God for the for past help and express his confidence in his continuing help. The expressions in the psalm like ‘when men attacked us,’ ‘swept us away,’ ‘escaped like a bird’, sounds more like a military attack and this psalm seems to be the result of the deliverance David had from it. The exact time of this incident is not clear but it could be during the beginning of David’s reign when the Philistines threatened Israel and David had to hid in the strongholds as the enemy wanted to hunt him down. 2 Samuel 5:17-25. God was his only help who heard his prayers and protected him from all the political and economic troubles which wearied his soul.

This psalm was sung in a similar situation when a minister, John Durie known to be one of the first Presbyterian ministers in Edinburgh was imprisoned for his outspokenness against the King of Scotland and was set free later in 1582. On entering the town, he was welcomed by two hundred of his friends which increased to a crowd of two thousand who began to sing, as they moved up the long High Street, ‘Now Israel may say,’ etc. They sang in four parts with deep solemnity, all joining in the well-known tune of the psalm.

In testing times, you need to trust in the Lord and believe that He is watching over you. In many trivial matters, you tend to get impatient and doubt God’s care towards you, forgetting that like David, you too were in dangerous situation in matters of your soul.  ^‘For you were once living in darkness but now you are light in the Lord.’ Ephesians 5:8. And now, ‘ you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy’. 1 Peter 2: 9,10

In gratitude, let’s give thanks every day saying, ‘If  LORD had not been on my side when Devil attacked me, I would have been swallowed, engulfed and swept over but I was not torn apart, I escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare because HE paid the Prize at the Cross for Me“.