Times When There Must be a God
Psalm 7:2
Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver.


Why pray so loudly, clearly, and distinctly? Because the enemy is mighty, and he may "tear my soul like a lion...while there is none to deliver." If it be a question between man and man, woe betide the weak! If the great battles of human existence are to be measured by the strength of the contending parties, virtue will be thrown down, discrowned, destroyed. But there are times when there must be a God: controversy would be intolerable, doubt would be out of place — not blasphemy against heaven, but blasphemy against the agonised heart. In these dark times we may be said to create a God. Judge these questions in your high moods; there is no intellectual ladder that you can set up against this mystery, and by which you can climb your way into the presence of the throne: the heart can fly all the distance, counting the separate constellations nothing in the exercise of its infinite strength, created by infinite trust. What we have lost in all these matters may be described as the Divine fire. We have thought to beat cold iron into shape. Iron will only obey the hammer and the hand when fire has undertaken to do the intermediate work; it is when the soul is on fire that we have no doubt about God. When we are prosperous, too highly indulged, even sated with luxury and plenty, we play the agnostic, the atheist, the speculative thinker; but when circumstances change, when the floor gives way, when the earth rocks, when the sun sinks, as if in mortal fear, and shuts out the day; when the child dies, and when all nature seems to be set in array against the processes of life — then the real man within us will talk. When agony is stinging the soul, and darkness is accumulating itself upon the life like a burden, then let man say whether he is imbecile, whether he is unworthy of the related condition of things, and of the sovereignty which overrules and guides and crowns them all.

(Joseph Parker, D. D.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver.

WEB: lest they tear apart my soul like a lion, ripping it in pieces, while there is none to deliver.




Turning to God in Time of Need
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