Psalm 41:10

Psalm 41:10

Raise me up

We might read this verse and “Tut-tut” a little, “Surely David, you know better. Revenge belongs to the Lord, let Him be the judge of your contemporaries and those who have turned against you.” Well, there are a number of ways of understanding this. Firstly, David may indeed be pleading for restoration so that he can go and take revenge on all those who have spoken evilly against him. I suppose it could be argued that he must be feeling better because instead of bewailing his illness and his weakness, he is starting to think about getting his own back! 

Let’s give David the benefit of the doubt though, shall we? This is a genuine request for mercy from the Lord. We know the king has sinned and suffered severely for it, I don’t think his first thoughts would be to get up from his sick bed and go and execute his enemies! I think that this is another part of the plea of this righteous man. He has had many attempts to get the Lord’s attention and he is not giving up. As each request remains unanswered, he uses a new form of approach to see if he can get a response from heaven. This time David is simply asking the Lord to heal and restore so that he may call his many foes to account. This is a man who is feeling better!

If there is a lesson to be learned here, surely it is to never give up in prayer and it is to examine our situation and to learn to pray over it from every angle; to evaluate who we are, what we have done, our relationships, our failures and successes and to grow the wiser having done so. These Psalms are not just the desperate pleadings of a doomed soul, they are an insight into the workings of the human mind in a dark place by one who feels confident to “Say it like it is” to an attentive God. Praise Him that we can do this. 

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