I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. –Psalm 7:17
Several years ago I watched a dramatic video taken by some people who were seeking shelter from a tornado that was bearing down upon them. As the tornado approached, those caught on the highway quickly parked their cars and found shelter beneath a highway underpass. The tornado blew across them and shook the underpass, but the people held on and were safe. That certainly looked like a solid plan: The tornado was coming, the highway underpass was right there, they got under it. Good plan, right? Wrong.
According to the “Tornado Safety Project,” an online resource which offers strategies for surviving a tornado, getting under a highway underpass is a bad idea: “An underpass may seem like a safe place, but may not be. While videos show people surviving under an underpass, those tornadoes have been weak. No one knows how survivable an underpass is in a strong or violent tornado. The debris flying under the underpass could be very deadly... head for a ditch” (http://www.tornadoproject.
Often times when we are faced with some new problem we look toward what appears to make sense. We mistakenly believe that we can handle this on our own strength. I’m a solid person and I’m made a strong stuff, right? I can handle this. Or worse, people look to some artificial means of support: drugs, alcohol, or outright denial. The best place to be when the difficulties of life come our way is in a personal relationship with Christ. We look to the Lord in the sure hope that He is with us and He will empower us to not simply get through the problem, whatever it may be, but to walk forward in victory.
David of the Old Testament understood this perfectly. He knew that his only hope for spiritual victory and for overcoming whatever trial he was facing rested in God. He could have sought to take on the problem with his own strength, but he knew that in the end this was a futile approach. A better strategy was to humble himself before the Living God. And having done so, he was empowered to rise up and praise the Lord, the rock upon which we can stand in times of trouble. For David, it made perfect sense to place himself in God’s hands. He humbled himself, took on an attitude of trusting God no matter what, and was able to walk forward in confident faith. When we adopt a similar strategy, we quickly find that what the world offers is no assurance of safety whatsoever. What God offers is certain, solid, and absolutely right. Like David, we will then know the power of lifting our voices and our hearts in praise to God for His wonderful presence on our lives.
