Day Two 

Psalm 9:7-10

⁷ But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
    He has established His throne for justice,
⁸ and He judges the world with righteousness;
    He judges the peoples with uprightness.

⁹ The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
    a stronghold in times of trouble.
¹⁰ And those who know Your name put their trust in You,
    for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.

         People can be oppressed for many, many reasons. We think of the politically oppressed, racially oppressed, socially oppressed, financially oppressed and such like. But we rarely, if ever, think of those who are Spiritually oppressed. Yet, Spiritual oppression can take the form of unresolved grief, unreasoning anger, uncertainty as to how to meet the day. So much is tied to our Spiritual well being, but our modern world rejects all of that.

         In the passage above, verse 9 refers to the oppressed and it refers to the times of trouble. Here is a tale of two Dads.

         I was staff clergy for nine years at a funeral home. A teenaged boy had died in an accident. He wasn’t driving the car, it wasn’t a horrific accident, more of a fender bender. But this young person hit the side window with his head pretty hard. He was in a coma for a few days. They did surgery to relieve the pressure off his brain. But he just passed quietly in the middle of the night. Typically, in a situation like that we would have the parents and siblings come in the day before the visitation so they could express their grief. In this case, it was only the Dad. He began to wail and weep. He cursed God and he swore that if he ever got his hands on the driver of the car, he would kill him. I tried to talk to him and he threatened me. Everything was at high volume. Finally, he ran out of steam, falling to the floor. I helped him to a chair and I talked to him. I doubt he heard me. His weeping was deep and trembling. He was oppressed with grief and unable to cope.

         The second situation involved a ten year old boy who had gone with his Dad and two older brothers to Lake Erie to fish from the shore. Like a lot of ten year old boys, he became bored. A small stream ran into the Lake and his father led him to it. It was not even twenty yards away from where they were fishing. Maybe four inches deep. His father set the little guy to finding crayfish for bait. The Dad went and joined his other sons and they fished for about five minutes before he turned around to check on the youngest son. The boy was laying face down in the water. He had drowned. A slight bruise on his head led the police and coroner to conclude he had his head close to the water to see the crayfish and had slipped and knocked himself out. At the funeral home, the father told me that his son had accepted Christ as Savior just a couple of weeks before. “I am going to miss him until the day I die, but I will see him again.”

         Let us pray today about the Spiritually oppressed. If you are oppressed, pray for yourself. That’s OK! We are to take the things on our heart to Him. If you know someone who is Spiritually oppressed, pray for that person.

         A small child hears the boom of thunder and runs to find a parent. Once with the parent, the child begins to calm. Be that way with the Lord.

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
    a stronghold in times of trouble.