Forsake Me Not When My Strength Is Spent

                                                                          Psalm 71:1-​11​

 

July 8, 2022

 

Forsake Me Not When My Strength Is Spent

 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame!  In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me, and save me!   Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.   For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.  Upon you I have learned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb.  My praise is continually of you.

 I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge.   My mouth is filled with your praise and with your glory all the day.   Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent.   For my enemies speak concerning me; those who watch for my life consult together and say, “God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.”

 

I now have a very clear understanding of my strength being spent, Having to have nurses lift you because your strength has left you, if that happens to you where do you take refuge?  To whom do you turn, do you have a rock that can withstand the storm you are in at that time of life?  I like David have learned there is only one source and it is found in the first paragraph of Psalm 71.

 

We must have had evil people when I was a child, but no way close to what we are seeing now.  Maybe we need to park on paragraph two, for we clearly went the wrong way.

 

In just eighty years as a culture we have come a long way, but is it the right way?  Over 40 years ago while in England for the first time Jan and I saw things on the TV that were shocking, it looked like a Playboy layout and not a commercial.  My dear friends and mentor Carroll & Joyce Ray explained to us that in 10-12 years we would be seeing the same thing in the USA.  Yes, we have come a long way baby, but no longer would you feel safe to have windows open or your door unlocked.  No way would you allow your child to be gone all day and not be tracking them with a cell phone, and talking to them often to make sure they are ok.  But that's the world I grew up in, Mom, I’m going fishing at the age of 10 and I will be home by dark.  As a society, we can’t imagine that world.  But then we also cannot understand that just about every mother on my street had permission to discipline me and if needed give me a whipping.  And at school, those coaches had a two-foot-long paddle and I believed it had my name on it, and the assistant Principal should have named his after me.  Now you would sue if they touched your little baby, but we did not have evil demonic kids killing classmates.  We were taught English, math, history, world history, the USA, and even about our great state.  Our teachers did not talk against our great nation, but they would teach us about how we saved Europe twice in WWI and WWII.  We had biology but they left the sex training to our parents, but it was my dog Skipper at an early age that taught me all I needed to know.  Skipper was a male German shepherd and he seemed to like girl dogs of just about any age, but he was not interested in boy dogs.  I guess Skipper would not have fit in our culture, he preferred the opposite sex and knew the difference between a girl dog and a boy dog.

 

 What is your mouth filled with, fear of those evil people, fear of loss of wealth, or like David, fear of the Lord and His praises?

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice