Guard My Life

Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Psalm 86:2

David cries out to God in great need. Time and again we find ourselves crying out to God. Matters can get so hopelessly entangled that we are tempted to give up. How easy it is for us to think that God does not know how to help. When this happens, everything is lost, and we do not want to pray anymore.  That’s when we give in to despair. But everything depends on your believing and trusting that God can do what seems to be impossible.

David put his trust in God, he thought of himself as a “servant of the Lord” –he stood ready to serve the One whose cause it was and who was able to accomplish it. Since David was a servant, it wasn’t up to him. He simply exclaimed: “I do not know what to do, I am at my wit’s end. But you, O Lord, you know how to take care of it!”

We rarely act that way. We want to be our own masters. We want to manage everything by ourselves and on our own terms. We want to be in control, and when things don’t go our way, we get angry and bitter. Because we fail to surrender all things to God, to his mercy and strength, everything gets turned upside down and we are brought to ruin. It’s as if we would rather bang our heads against a wall than keep still and humbly pray: “O my God, please help me!”

David, the king, casts himself at God’s feet. David, the servant, completely trusts God to accomplish what he himself is unable to do. He knows that with God everything is possible and that God listens to our prayers and cares about them. This is what we want to hold onto firmly, in faith. For we will indeed receive his help, if like David, we can exclaim: “Blessed are all who take refuge him” (Ps. 2:12).

Johann Christoph Blumhardt