113 I hate double-minded people,
but I love your law.
114 You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
115 Away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commands of my God!
116 Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I shall live;
do not let my hopes be dashed. [NIV]
I am functioning on the edge of exhaustion right now (coming up on 36 hours since I got up “this morning.”) So, I’m not going to be very deep today. I will just make a couple observations and then move on without unpacking them.
I agree with the psalmist in the first verse. Other translations nuance double-minded to be more inline with duplicitous. One of the biggest issues facing our society today is a complete breakdown of the foundations of trust. I have heard a lot of people bemoaning the fact that we need to start trusting one another again. I call BS. Trust does not begin with choosing to trust someone. Trust begins by being trustworthy. Double-minded people are by definition not trustworthy.
I find the second verse to be somewhat timely. I took a walk through the woods with my brother-in-law, nephew, and a good friend of my sister (three separate people). One of our two destinations was a biergarten (3.5 km from our start point). The other was the ruins of a fortification (i.e. castle) that fell in the year 1526. This was a refuge and shield built by human hand. While I cannot imagine that such a magnificent structure could fall to attack, it did. The psalmist hits the nail on the head to choose to look at God’s refuge and steal rather than human fortifications.
(Off to bed 1600EST)
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