They return at evening, snarling like dogs, and prowl about the city. – Psalm 59:6, 14

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 13, 2012): Psalm 59

We repeat the things that are important to us. You probably notice that whenever someone is talking to you. If you do not pick up on what the person you are speaking with thinks is important for you to know, you will be doomed to receive the same repeated messages until you do. But our reality is that we do not all share the same sense of what is important, so often we – or at least I – miss what is important to others. So, when I am involved in a counselling session and I am wondering what is important to the person that is sitting across from me, the easiest way for me to figure that out is to listen to what the person is repeating as they talk to me.

So as I read Psalm 59, I notice something; there is a repetition. The sixth verse and the fourteenth are not just similar, they are identical. David thought that what he was writing in these verses was important – at least it was to him. And the reason that it was important to him was because he was writing about what was happening to him in his every day life. We find the full story in 1 Samuel 19, but in verse 11 we read this - Saul sent men to David’s house to watch it and to kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, warned him, “If you don’t run for your life tonight, tomorrow you’ll be killed.” As David writes about it later, he talks about them coming at the evening hour and watching his house. His enemy snarls like dogs; David is not underestimating how dangerous his enemy is, but he is not there. He has been warned away and the result of the warning is that the dogs have to prowl around the city to try and find him.

Psalm 59 is a Psalm full of emotion, as many of the Psalms are, because the threat is very real. We know the end of the story, but at the time that David wrote the Psalm, he did not. He was not sure that he would ever be king, it was just a faith in God that caused him to put one foot in front of the other as he pursued the goal that had been placed in front of him. And everywhere he went, the dogs still prowled trying to find him and kill him.  David was totally dependent on God for every safe moment and the realization of the future.

And that I can understand, because I know all about the presence of the dogs that are searching for me – and the reality of the faith that causes me (and hopefully you) to move confidently into the future.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 20