Daily Devotion – April 22, 2020 – Jeremy Maahs
Psalm 61:2b-3
Lead me to the rock
    that is higher than I;
 for you are my refuge,
    a strong tower against the enemy.
In the 150 days before Julie and I were married, we were challenged to read through the psalms together each day starting with Psalm 150 and ending the day before our wedding with Psalm 1. I’m not going to tell you that we did that very well (I probably read less than half of the days), but this challenge had me reading through psalms I had never read before. I had never really appreciated the poetry and I didn’t really know how to contextualize all this talk about “the enemy,†but the more I forced myself to just sit down and read, the more I appreciated.
During the months leading up to our wedding, I worked at a bible camp. On my breaks I would often find myself in the lakeside lounge, a room with log-cabin styled walls filled with 8-foot-tall windows overlooking the lake. When a storm would roll in, I could so clearly see the lightning and feel the thunder. The rain would beat against the windows, and yet I knew I was safe. I was free to sit and awe in the power of the weather. Repeated words in the psalms started to take on a contextualized meaning for me. You are my refuge, a strong tower, a rock, a stronghold. Unlike the David of the Bible who wrote this, I don’t have enemies who are out to kill me. But like the storms outside the window, life can be chaotic. The stresses of balancing getting prepared for the upcoming wedding and being present as a counselor for kids at camp, or the monotony of waking up every morning knowing that I was “on duty†and responsible for the safety of kids that may or may not get along with each other. I could take comfort in the knowledge that God is higher than I. That God is my strong tower, my lakeside lounge against the storms.Â
