PRAYER in downtown

Sometimes we just need to stack up the prayers, one on top of the other–like in these opening verses. We need more than just a few simple petitions. We need to lay it on thick, words tripping over themselves out of our mouths. You’re my refuge, Lord, don’t fail me, hear? Rescue me, deliver me, turn your ear over this way, save me, be my rock, shout out that command to have me saved, deliver me from the evil and the wicked and the cruel. You have been my hope and confidence all the way back to my birth day, and so I will forever praise you.

We’re the ones who really need these prayers, these reminders. Enemies (real or those living up in our heads) are always in standby mode, ready to confront and to confound us, to plant a little doubt in our heads, to appeal to our instability, our sensitive natures, our faithlessness, our independence. The Lord will continue, as he has throughout our lives, to be a refuge forever, as from long ago.

Even with all this history of steady and faithful love and protection, don’t we still doubt a bit what is to come? If there isn’t some end to all of it? Especially when we get to be over-the-hill, useless to the world and to our friends and families. So we start piling it on again, starting with what seems so over-the-top: Your righteousness reaches to the skies! Wow! Despite troubles and difficulties and sin, there He is pulling us back into the fold, barely touching the reservoirs of righteousness at his right hand.

And so we continue with prayers, and with praise…reminders of what a wondrous and loving God this is, the One whose righteousness is without measure. Open up and shout it out!