Most mornings do not bring peril.
But for some people—this writer numbers himself among them—and for all threatened peoples, morning arrives with the scent of danger. Before my feet hit the floor, a thousand potential disasters have stomped briefly on my soul.
A beginning is by nature an imperiled moment, a tender shoot extinguishable by the crush of a single boot. Anything can happen in a beginning. Fear tilts perception’s scale to the narrow downside of all eventualities. The day needs little encouragement to break darkly.
A prayer in the book called Isaiah knows that morning is cousin to trouble. It may or may not bring shattering things. But it might. The mere possibility is enough for fear to draw itself erect as a whisper or a roar. Only YHWH is sufficient for such things.
O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. (Isaiah 33:2 ESV)
Because Israel knew real danger, it knew also the fears that dress up in that costume. Because the danger was real, the fear of it was a force with which the nation must reckon.
That reckoning came, for at least a circle of tender hearts within the wider nation, in the form of prayer that YHWH might bare his arm and—when necessary—swing it violently against all dangers, real and perceived.
YHWH was needed in the crisis, necessary in the true time of trouble, for YHWH alone could save his people when flesh-and-blood barbarians were in fact upon the gates. He was needed, too, in the morning that insinuated that this day—just maybe—could be the darkest day.
Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. (Isaiah 33:2 ESV)
Canter Bridge 
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