The Lord delivers us from our distress
Psalm 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19。February 28, 2023 - Tuesday, 1st Week of Lent
There is a proverb in my culture “out of the rain into the gutter” which means going from bad to worst. That is what happened to David. He ran away from king Saul to the king of Gath, Achish to avoid death. But, the slayer of Goliath and the most successful general of Saul in the fight against the Philistines was recognised by the servants of Achish. To avoid death, David feigned madness and surprisingly Achish allowed him to leave unharmed. Psalm 34 links its praise of God for deliverance with that story and the author concludes that the Lord rescues the righteous from all their distress (see Ps. 34:7, 16, 18).
The Bible portrays God’s deliverance from death in two different ways. The first way is evident in the story of David and the accounts of the Gospel. God intervenes on behalf of His people by preventing their physical death. They either escape the plots of their enemies or get healed from a deadly sickness. But, we also find the stories of martyrdom in the Bible in which those who were faithful to the Lord got killed. The paramount story of martyrdom is Jesus’ passion. In this case, the Lord’s deliverance came after physical death as resurrection from the dead.
The psalmist declares: “When the just cry out, the Lord hears them” (Ps 34:18). In the Book of Daniel, three young Jewish exiles, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were thrown into a burning fiery furnace for refusing to worship a golden image made by the king of Babylon. In our Catholic version of the Book of Daniel, these three men “walked about in the flames, singing to God and blessing the Lord” (Daniel 3:24). Then, the text cites a prayer of one of them, Abednego, that begins with the declaration: “Blessed are you, and praiseworthy, O Lord, the God of our ancestors, and glorious forever is your name” (Daniel 3:26). As we all know, they walked out of the flames unharmed.
On the other hand, in the letter to the Hebrews, we read that Jesus “who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death” was heard because of his godly fear. But, the Passion Narratives in the Gospel tell us that Jesus died. How was he saved from death then? The answer is given by Saint Peter in his first sermon in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. The tomb of Jesus is empty and the apostle explains that “God raised [Jesus] up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be held by it” (Acts 2:24).
In our world, there are many brokenhearted people and those who like David go from bad to worse. The statement of the psalmist assures us that the Lord sees our sufferings, and rescues us from all our troubles. Even death cannot harm us anymore because Jesus turned it into a passage to everlasting life.