Psalm 37: All Is Well
In the midst of a global pandemic, racial reckoning (maybe), polarized politics (and all the guns), and an impending housing crisis (oh, gosh, I hope not). Psalm 37 is a word in season. Our culture is not built for the long view. Eugene Peterson, nearly thirty years ago, labeled the American world “an instant society” and things have only accelerated since then. Now our culture moves at the speed of the 5G refresh. What’s worse, not only do our minds encounter informational hurdles at a rate far too swift for our consciousness to clear, we also receive earth-shaking, and often shattering, news updates sandwiched in between banal gossip and sweet updates about our friends’ kids and vacations. It all conspires like a torture technique, wearing us down, robbing us of sleep or soundness and mind, and whispering all along: you’re not going to make it.
Psalm 37 is the biblical equivalent of Julian of Norwich’s famous, and often trivialized dictum, “All is well and the manner of all things shall be well.” David, now advanced in years, writes out of the rich wealth of his life with God saying:
I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending, and their children become a blessing (v. 25).
David reassures, not only does God take care of those who put him and his ways first, their lives are a fountain of the blessings of God both for neighbors in the present and generations in the future. The constant presence of the wicked in this psalm helps us to see, David’s day is just as gilded as our own, evil manifesting itself in the only tired tropes it knows: money, power, etc. etc. But David, from the opening line of the psalm, frames his vision with his patient wisdom: “do not fret” (vv. 1, 7, 8). Do not fret over the actions of vindictive politicians, do not fret over self-serving leaders, do not fret over the designs of those who delight in chaos. Do not allow yourself to be mired in the quicksand of anger and wrath. It only leads you to become like that which you despise.
Instead of spinning your wheels trying to reverse course on the spinning of the news cycles, David invites us to the subversive disciplines of trust (v. 3a), doing good (v. 3b), delight (v. 4), giving in the face of shortage (v.25) and perhaps the most counterintuitive of all—stillness (v. 7). Now, lest this be seen as escapist religion, happily hanging our heads in the clouds while the world burns, David reminds us, this wild earth is the theater of action, but where are often mistaken is it’s not primarily us who act. It is God:
Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday (v. 6)… for the arms of the the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous (v. 17). For the Lord loves justice, he will not forsake his faithful ones (v. 25).
In troubled times, it is tempting to find scapegoats or to play the savior but our first call is to stillness. Salvation is always received. Ours is a day that calls for courage, the courage of trust, doing good, delight, giving and stillness. Courage to act starts with courage to remain:
The salvation of the the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they take refuge in him (vv. 39-40).