Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 14th March 2024
Psalm 62: A Psalm of Comfort for Times of Stress
How are we to cope with times of stress and anxiety? We have seen how the author of psalm 62 started his psalm with three pieces of advice. To start with, we are to learn to be patient; but in addition to the virtue of patience, we are to look to God for help and to be confident that help we need is already there- if we have eyes to see it.
The psalmist follows this advice with some powerful imagery. When we are stressed and overwhelmed, we can feel that our world is collapsing around us. We might feel that we are “teetering on the edge”; and sometimes people talk about “feeling a bit wobbly”. We need to recover a sense of security and stability.
The psalmist expresses these feelings using specific images. He imagines a wall that is leaning at a dangerous angle, and a fence that looks as if it is just about to collapse, and uses these as images to describe what it feels like when we’re overwhelmed by the stresses and strains of life. He then contrasts these images with two pictures of security and stability: a great outcrop of rock, and a mighty fortress. As I write these words, I am reminded of a conversation I had a few years ago with someone who had gone to school in Durham and had then attended University in the same city. If you are familiar with the city, you will know that the Cathedral, Castle and older University buildings are all located on a high peninsula surrounded by the river Wear. They are built on rock- quite literally. The person I was talking to described the peninsula as “his rock”: it was not only a place of security and stability in general (“a rock”), but it was also a place which meant so much to his own sense of identity (it was “his” rock).
And so the psalmist writes as follows:
“[God] alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
How long will you assail a person, will you batter your victim, all of you, as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?”
When we feel that our world around us is about to collapse, we can find the safety and security we need in God – for God is our rock and our fortress.
And note that the psalmist is not content to write that God is merely “a “ rock or “a” fortress. God is our rock and our fortress – He is there for each one of us, and He invites each one of us to come to him and find a place of refuge.