The psalms have fed and watered the spiritual lives of God’s people for millennia. One of the most dramatic expressions of this nourishing quality was during the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was a video, made by the Church of Christ the Saviour and shared by the Ukrainian Bible Society, of people reading Psalm 31. So far so ordinary, but: these readers were in bomb shelters, in cellars, outdoors, in houses shattered by shellfire.
The video is, of course, in Ukrainian, which not many Preach readers will understand. Even subtitled, though, it has an extraordinary power. Here are ordinary people, under the most painful, exhausting and terrifying conditions, who find that words written thousands of years ago speak across thirty centuries straight to their hearts. The psalm gives them comfort, not just in the sense of an arm around the shoulder and soft sympathy, but because it strengthens them to face what has to be faced. It speaks of a God who is with them, and with whom they will overcome.
What makes it such a psalm for their times? It begins with a statement of faith and a cry for help: ‘I come to you, LORD, for protection; let me never be defeated.’ Right from the start, it sets a scene of conflict: the psalmist is being menaced by enemies. Perhaps these are spiritual enemies as well as material: ‘You hate those who worship false gods,’ he says (verse 6).
In the rest of the psalm, there is an emotional ebb and flow. It moves from expressions of faith – ‘You have not let my enemies capture me’ (verse 8) – to cries of anguish: ‘I am exhausted by sorrow, and weeping has shortened my life’ (verse 10). It calls out the ‘liars’ and the ‘wicked’, and ends with an exhortation: ‘Be strong, be courageous, all of you that hope in the LORD’ (verse 24).
