Calamities and Grace

Psalm 57 has been called “a prayer of safety from enemies.” When we believe that danger threatens to harm us, body and soul, that is the time that makes us cry out to God with the fervency of the Psalmist. Hear the Psalm’s second verse.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!
For my soul trusts in You;
And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge,
Until these calamities have passed by.

Ah, the calamities! So ever-present with us in uncertain times. Calamities! The synonyms are many and ominous:

Disaster, catastrophe, tragedy, cataclysm, crisis, adversity, blight, tribulation, woe, affliction, evil.

And those are just the first few listed in my trusty Thesaurus. There are many more, describing a state of being that is frightening, all-consuming and dangerous. Such a state of being we want to avoid at all costs. We want to take refuge swiftly before evil overtakes us.

Can you recall a time when your life was in calamity mode? So many situations can place us in calamity mode: illness, relationship problems, addictions, loneliness, aging, financial distress, the loss of a loved one and so many other situations of distress.

We feel as if “enemies” are chasing us, unrelenting in their threat. We run like the wind, if we can, to get away from them. But all too often, we look behind us and an “enemy” is right there, looming large before us and bringing us face to face with the cataclysm we feared. So we are now in the clutches of adversity, and we wonder if where we are is where we’ll ever be.

We are very good at laying out our calamities, lining them up one by one for all to see. Because when others see our calamities, we believe they will help us. We believe that our friends can help us escape our calamity du jour. In their help, we place our hope. Trouble is, sometimes we’re disappointed because hope does not often come through friends. Those around us have their own calamities. When they don’t (or won’t) reach into our troubled place and help us, we despair. What can we do? Where will we turn?

The truth is that when our soul trusts in God, we will wake up from our nightmare and find that we are sheltered in the shadow of God’s wings. Safe from calamity. Nestled in a place of refuge. Brokenness repaired. Watching gratefully as calamity after calamity passes us by.

What a grace is that! What unmitigated compassion! What sheer loving mercy from the God who might just as well have left us in the danger of our calamities.

Thanks be to God for every safe refuge, from every calamity. Amen