Canter Bridge

Life thrusts upon us a moment when we are alone with God. In the best variants of this crisis of solitude, family and friends stand by with loving hands extended willingly but to no immediate effect. There is nothing they can do.

One is alone with God. It is a moment of necessary, unavoidable singularity. One discovers, in some ways, who one is on that sparsely populated stage. One finds out who one is not. One encounters God as he can only be known when no one else is in the hall.

We find the psalmists’ most urgent words to be intensely appropriate in such a moment. They pour effortlessly from the page, they roll off one’s whispering tongue like native speech. They articulate the shape of the besieged and solitary heart with indisputable authority.

They do not speak of God, but rather to him:

In you, O LORD, I seek refuge;
do not let me ever be put to shame;
in your righteousness deliver me.
Incline your ear to me;
rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me,
a strong fortress to save me.

You are indeed my rock and my fortress;
for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,
take me out of the net that is hidden for me,
for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.

The metaphor of rock, fortress, and refuge populates such praying as its principal architecture. The need for divine speed establishes the prayer’s tempo. If the Lord does not hurry, there will be no rescue. Shame will—in its heedless, brazen posture—usurp the place where integrity once stood.

No one can help.

Only YHWH.

He may move or he may not. The psalmist knows that everything depends on this. So do we.

There is little secret knowledge, little esoterica worth the energy it takes to discover and absorb it. Yet there is truth that becomes accessible only when life frog-marches us into that clearing where we stand alone. One last, desperate cry pleas for YHWH to join us there, instructing him even on the mechanics of bending his ear to us.

It is life’s great hinge.