Psalms: Saying Yes in the DarknessSample

I think my acting and performing loving daughter would love today’s Scripture. In the face of a particular dark season, David gives quite the performance. Our response in the darkness—to God and to others—very often boils down to fear or trust. When emotions overwhelm us, it can be hard to turn to God in the midst of it. Will we choose to hold our pain in open hands and trust that God will bring us through—or will our fear cause us to react in ways that we regret?

Fear has a lot of power in our lives. David wrote Psalm 56 from a place of staggering fear—a situation he faced in 1 Samuel 21. 

The passage in 1 Samuel follows the drama of David’s escape from Saul, when David’s wife Michal convinced David to jump out the window and flee for his life (1 Samuel 19:12). What David did next is full of all sorts of drama: he acts like a crazy person before the king of Gath. How desperate and freaked out does a person need to be to behave like this? 

First of all, what in the world was David doing in enemy territory? I mean, hello…this is the land of the Philistines! Don’t you think they’d recognize him and be less than thrilled to see the man who killed their champion Goliath—carrying Goliath’s sword, no less (1 Samuel 21:8-9)?

Though David definitely thinks creatively and on his feet throughout Scripture, sometimes, like us, he allows fear to overrule him, and he chooses the wrong way. It’s possible that in his response to King Achish, he chose to not trust that the Lord was right by his side—and let fear win.

When we’re faced with fear, let’s turn to God and not let the fear rule us. When we trust God in the midst of our fear, we can rest in His control of the outcome.