I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Psalm 16:8 (NIV)
Who Stands at Your Right
The man on shift has been doing this three weeks. At two in the morning the pump house is louder than he expected, and the concrete floor moves a little underfoot. He starts the pump, reads the card taped to the panel, and starts it again, because the needle didn’t move the first time and he can’t tell whether that was the pump or the gauge. He calls the number on the card. He opens the valves in the wrong order, walks the line back, and opens them again the way the woman on the phone tells him to, and by the time the last one is turned the floor is going under his boots the way it goes when that much water starts to move at once. By then his hands shake.
The man praying Psalm 16 is awake at night too, with his own heart instructing him in the dark. He says he keeps his eyes always on the Lord, and that with God at his right hand he will not be shaken. He aims his eyes, and God is already standing where he aims them.
I’m sure of this much. A man can shake in every way a body shakes and still be standing on something that holds. So you can pray this at the worst hour of a night you’re handling badly. Aim your eyes where he aimed his. God stood at his right hand, and his looking over didn’t put him there.
The door swings open and the woman who runs this station comes in with her coat over her arm and stands next to the man at the panel. She hasn’t touched a valve. “My first winter I called that number four times a night,” she says, and she pulls a chair up and asks him to walk her back through what he did.
A Prayer to Remember
Father, thank you for standing at the right hand of a man who was awake at night with his own heart instructing him. He praised you for counseling him, and even at night his heart kept instructing him. You’ll be at my right hand tonight, whatever the floor is doing under me.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
