Psalm 54 is one to memorise.
Psalm 54 makes me think of the Holocaust. In 1940, Nazi forces in occupied Poland rounded up 400,000 Jews – 30% of Warsaw’s population – and confined them to what became known as the Warsaw Ghetto. A space only 2.4% of the area of Warsaw, it was overcrowded, subject to virulent disease, cut off from outside employment opportunities and subject to insane rationing. The average resident of the Warsaw Ghetto was apparently eating around 169 calories a day; an average daily intake is closer to 2,000 calories a day, and your body goes into starvation mode at much below 1,300. Many, many, many people died in the Ghetto of disease and starvation. More were transported to death camps and died there. And more again died in the Warsaw Uprising, an armed struggle against the Nazis that occurred in 1943 and ended with most of the buildings of the Ghetto being burned and demolished.
The Ghetto was full of amazingly talented people – writers and artists, doctors, teachers, lawyers and engineers. So as well as being a place of great hardship, it was a place of great creativity and learning. It’s not hard to imagine that the rabbis – and the artists and musicians – turned to The Book that both our faiths share, and that David’s words took on particular significance for some of them.
Come with great power, O God, and rescue me!
Defend me with your might.
Listen to my prayer, O God.
Pay attention to my plea.
For strangers are attacking me;
violent people are trying to kill me.
They care nothing for God.
But God is my helper.
The Lord keeps me alive!
May the evil plans of my enemies be turned against them.
Do as you promised and put an end to them.
I will sacrifice a voluntary offering to you;
I will praise your name, O Lord,
for it is good.
For you have rescued me from my troubles
and helped me to triumph over my enemies.
If you’re at The Big Table, then I feel pretty safe assuming that no-one is actually currently trying to kill you. But here’s the thing: the people rounded up to starve in the Warsaw Ghetto didn’t expect it to happen to them either. Their lives were on a trajectory of meaningful (or not so meaningful) work, raising families, maintaining friendships, following God and contributing to their community – just like ours are.
Now, before you think I’ve come over all Harold Camping: I’m not saying I think murderous fanaticism is on the cards for suburban Perth. But I don’t think we can necessarily know what God is going to put in front of us over the course of our lives. And in any event, I know for certain that at some time – probably this week – Satan is going to try to disconnect you from the thing that brings real life; the deep interaction with God that brings peace and purpose.
So here’s my point: Psalm 54 is a collection of seven verses that you will need to pray at some point. Seven verses that will move you from fear and need, through a reminder of who God is and what He can do, and leave you in a place of praise. In the Warsaw Ghetto, if you found Psalm 54 by chance, that was probably a blessing. If you knew where Psalm 54 was in your Bible, that would have been better. But if the words of Psalm 54 were engraved in your heart so that they spilled easily from your tongue – that would have been the best. It’s easy to pray out of our fear and our need, but we need to practice moving from there to acknowledging and praising God. We need muscle memory.
Psalm 54 is one to memorise.