DAYS OF TROUBLE, by Raphael ben Levi
“For he will conceal me in his shelter on the day of trouble; he will hide me in the folds of his tent, he will set me on a rock.” ( Ps 27:5)
Trouble is no stranger particularly in these current times, devastating populations and communities throughout the world. The sheer scale and intensity of events that came upon us with a terrifying suddenness have taken most people by surprise with vicious brutality; ‘normal’ life for many has been irrevocably turned on its head and the world’s support systems that once propped people up are quickly vanishing or already gone.
In Psalm 27, read daily by Jews throughout this month of Elul, God promises to conceal and shelter all those who know and love Him in times of severe trial and testing. He does not promise to preserve believers from trouble but to abide with them in the midst of it.
Although the day of trouble may be an uninvited guest, believers can know in and through it the deep unfathomable riches of His love, mercy, compassion and faithfulness. This is the greatest victory against those who seek with intense hatred the destruction in life of everything that represents righteous and godly living. It is the fiercest response in the darkest of times that carry us on eagles wings and sustain us from moment to moment.
God’s promises are unswerving; in the good, the bad and the ugly; in a crisis and in a God-moment, in restoration and transformation, in the darkness of soul and epiphany, amid the shadows and within the fullness of glory. And so, every fibre of our being cleaves to Him as expressed in the totality of our lives.
Here is contained in Psalm 27 something which transcends the beauty of words and becomes an exquisite treasure manifested within the furnace of affliction. To be ‘hidden in the folds of His tent’ is to know His all-sufficiency every moment in the eternal now and forever.
“So what should we say about this? If God is with us, no one can defeat us? Can anything separate us from the love Christ has for us? Can troubles or problems or sufferings or hunger or nakedness or danger or violent death? Yes, I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:31,35-36, 38-39— New Century Version)
