a psalm rescues me, or not

For starters, I am a "distributed learner" with Luther Seminary. That is one way of saying that I live in my home town, far from any ELCA seminary and pursue God's call on my life. The details amount to taking online classes, flying to MN for short term classes, all the while attempting to work, embrace family & friends and keep up a house and yard (...sort of). I'm time-and-energy challenged, but who isn't??

I find myself in a familiar anxious space: facing the end-of-term projects of one semester, while planning flight, books and expenses for the next on-campus time. There is always a backlog of all kinds of other tasks simultaneously. My cohort is posting our ritual protests (..."don't they know we need a break??!"). I have to admit that it's easy to get stressed and disoriented in the mix. So where so you go?

Psalm 94 got dropped in my lap this morning. I am grateful.

"If the Lord had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot is slipping,”
Your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
Your consolations cheer my soul....

...the Lord has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge." (v.17-22)

And I'm thinking: 'yeah, Lord, my foot is slipping here. Help me regain some solid ground.' But I realize this psalm was not written to be my personal channel to God.

Who was this poet? What was the threat on his life? The powerful wicked ones are killing widows, foreigners and orphans. I am quickly confronted with the fact that my stresses are not of this magnitude. These are all the weak and marginalized folks whom God loves. Where is justice?! About the time the poet screams for God's vengeance, he calms down at verse 12. It's a Holy Spirit shift of the winds, as far as I'm concerned. He recalls God's steady hand, God's faithfulness of the past. All of what I have quote here is past tense.

And I pause. I feel a calming of the little squall inside me. Different trials and stresses-same God of faithfulness. When I recount the hand of God in my life, and among the lives of others, it shifts my thoughts in a powerful way. Like the psalmist, I am comforted to know that all the stuff that seems bigger than me is never bigger than God. God's Spirit brings comfort and focus. I won't lean on this psalm as my own personal "grab-hold-of-God's-promises" passage. Rather, I'm grateful to be reminded of the source of all hope. I know deep in my spirit that God is the One who holds me instead. "Peace that passes all understanding." It's real.