The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Psalm 18:2 (NIV)
Sung After He Got Out
Ask him about the year he nearly lost the place and he’ll tell you, and what he tells you is a list. His brother-in-law, who co-signed and never once brought it up afterward. The woman at the bank who filed something a day early. The boiler, which did not go, and which by rights should have.
He says them in that order every time, and the order isn’t the order they happened in. If you ask him why the boiler is on a list with two people, he says because it’s on the list.
Saul was hunting David, and the song came out of him after the Lord had gotten him out from under Saul and everyone else who was after him. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. David says what being under it had felt like: cords of death wrapped around him, and torrents of destruction going over his head. He’s singing from the far side of that.
Rock, fortress, shield, stronghold. He piles them up, one on another, the way a man does when one word won’t hold it. Every one of them puts a hard thing between a man and what’s coming at him, and none of them makes what’s coming stop. Whoever hides behind a wall can hear the noise on the other side of it. Saul was still Saul the whole time David was calling God his fortress, and the psalm never pretends otherwise.
In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. A man went under, made a sound, and the sound arrived.
Rock I can say first thing in the morning and mean before I’m properly awake.
David’s list has one name on it, said six ways over. The man with the boiler on his has never worked out who to put at the top of it, and he keeps it anyway, and he is not a man who believes in luck.
Nothing in his trade has changed since. Same margins, same month in the winter when it gets thin, and he has the list.
A Prayer to Remember
I waited until it got this bad before I said anything to you, God. I’m saying it now. I’m in something I can’t get out of by myself, and I’m asking you to get me out. However long that takes, I’ll keep calling.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
