In the Lord I Take Refuge: 31 Days in the PsalmsSample

This psalm is another individual lament and is the first instance of a psalm that includes prayers for the personal downfall of one’s enemies. Such psalms are not expressions of petty annoyances or insults but are cries to God for justice in the face of bloodthirsty and deceitful persecutors.

This psalm is one of many places in the Bible where we can be greatly encouraged by the sheer earthiness of the Bible. Despite being the religious book of billions, the Christian Scriptures are not abstract or ethereal, disconnected from life's visceral emotions and experiences in a fallen world. The Bible is concrete, tangible, and rooted in gritty reality. David is “groaning” (v. 1). Disgusted by the deceitful schemes of the wicked, he pleads with God for justice, for a righting of wrongs, for the evil of the wicked to be returned on their own head (v. 10). Such language—even more, such prayer—sounds abrasive to modern ears, immersed as we are in a culture of tolerant niceness. Yet David knows that for God to tolerate wickedness would undermine the very character of God and his righteous purposes for the world.

Content to leave the punishment of all evil in God’s hands, David directs his heart elsewhere. He does not let thoughts of evildoers fester in his mind but finally rests in God, his refuge (vv. 11–12), who must do what is right.

And so God did. At the climax of all of human history, God showed us just how concrete and tangible he was willing to become in the ultimate righting of all wrongs. Refusing to remain abstract or ethereal, the second person of the Trinity became one of us, knowing all of our weaknesses except sin.

Are you groaning today? Your reigning Savior knows what that is like. He, too, groaned, on a cross, so that every groaning you now experience may result in your ultimate strengthening.