TAKE COURAGE
based on Psalm 27: 1-14
By David Rogne

I was at a party one evening where a woman was talking about a recent trip she had taken to England. "And you know," she said, "one of the things I really admire about the English is their fortitude. Why, everywhere I went, all over England, I saw signs on buildings that I think must have been put up during the dark days of World War II. The signs said, 'Take Courage.’" I couldn't help but smile when she said it, for I had seen those signs too. I couldn't bring myself to tell her, but the buildings on which those signs were found are often pubs and "Courage" is the name of a beer! Of course, it is a play on words, and the advertisers know how inclined we are to notice the phrase, for courage is something we greatly need. Not just courage for heroic acts, but courage that can win out against depression, brace the spirit against anxiety, enable people to be composed in hardship, to stand up under pressure, to carry on in the face of doubt, to be hopeful when the good things have slipped out of life.

The struggle for that kind of courage - the courage to go on - is described frequently on the pages of the Bible. Those who wrote the Psalms were frequently dejected because of some severe problem they were going through. Perhaps that is why the Psalms are so meaningful to us - they were written by people whose human problems are discernible, and we can identify with them.

The Psalmist acknowledges that the reasons for losing heart are numerous. He speaks of adversaries or foes. David seems to have known a lot about that. He was in the king business. Before he became king there were those who opposed him because they felt he was ambitious. After he became king there were those who opposed him because they were loyal to the old regime. He knew that there were ruthless people out to get him, including his own son, Absolom, who led a revolt that forced David out of the capital.

We may not be in the king business, but we know that any business can experience what David experienced.

The author speaks of being cut-off from loved ones. He says, "My father and mother forsake me." It may not have come to that for us, but we do know what it is to feel alone.

Dr. Abraham Maslow, famed research analyst, estimates that the average American meets only about 50% of his need for love, interpersonal support, and intimacy. In the latter stages of his research, Maslow became even more negative in his summary: "The truth is that the average American does not have a real friend in the world." Can such an attitude affect our survival? You bet it can.

Dr. William Glasser, another psychotherapist, writes "Several years ago I talked to a man who had barely survived a serious attempt to kill himself. When I asked him why he had tried, he replied that he was lonely and had been lonely for so long that being dead seemed a better choice than living in such pain. Research bears him out. Most people who commit or attempt suicide describe incredible loneliness as the reason." Feeling forsaken or alone can devastate us.

The Psalmist also speaks of violence which puts him in physical jeopardy. We know something of what he was talking about. Some of us grew up in communities where the front door was never locked, or if it was, the key was under the mat so that all who knew about it could let themselves in. Kids could play hide and seek or kick the can until late into the night. One could ride the bus anywhere or spend an afternoon in any park. Now we have double locks on the door, burglar alarms, fewer people go out at night and many stay away from parks. There was a story in the newspaper awhile back of an elderly couple who had lived in the same house in the same neighborhood most of their lives. They took their own lives because they were too filled with fear to go out, and too old to move. It wasn't worth going on. We know about violence.

The reason why people lose heart when confronted with these very real problems is that there is no place for God in their view. One of the most famous paintings in the world is DaVinci's "Mona Lisa." Most of us can bring to mind the portrait of the enchanting wife of a Milan banker, immortalized in half-length view, her hands quietly folded and her enigmatic smile. The background is nice, too - a soft garden-like backdrop of trees and hills, which could almost stand alone as a landscape painting, thanks to Leonardo's genius in the use of light and shadow. But it is Mona Lisa, not the garden, that makes the picture. Remove her and the life of the picture goes with her.

The Bible offers us a view of life in which God is central. If you remove God from the picture, as our secular view of life does, then all we have left is background. No central point of reference. No focus. Nothing that ties our view of life together. Life becomes more than we can handle.
Faced with his own dejection the other thing the Psalmist does is to share some ideas about how he discovered the courage to go on. For one thing, he remembered past events.” My head is lifted up," he says. Remembrance of past blessings gives us confidence to move into an uncharted future. Judaism and Christianity are both religions of remembering. Atheistic communism, on the other hand, is a philosophy of forgetting. Before Czechoslovakian communism was overthrown a few years ago, the Czech president, Gustav Husak, was called "the president of forgetting." Commenting along this line, historian Milan Hubl writes: "The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history... before long the nation will forget what it is, and what it was."

Trust is an expectancy grounded in remembrance. Only as we learn to see God's hand in the past will we learn to trust God in the future. One of the benefits of pausing to say grace before a meal, no matter how uninspired we feel, is that the person praying is obliged to look for places where God meets us in life. When we thank God for daily mercies, it means that we have to notice them, take stock of them, and that leaves a deposit of assurance that we are cared for. That assurance can come back to comfort us in dark days when the blessings seem less obvious.

Another thing the Psalmist intends to do is to be present at the place of worship. He wants "to live in the house of the Lord." That is, he wants to be a regular member of the community that puts God at the center of life. We humans need that regular reinforcement that comes from associating with others who are seeking to grow in faith. In Maeterlinck's book The Life of the Bee the author remarks upon the honeybee's need for community. The bee is one of nature's creatures most in need of being gathered into community with other bees. "She will dive for an instant into flower-filled space," he writes, "as the swimmer will dive into the sea that is filled with pearls, but under pain of death it behooves her at regular intervals to return and breathe the crowd as the swimmer must return and breathe the air. Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favorable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness." This is a way of saying that you cannot keep a bee; you can keep only bees. Nor can you keep a human being; you can keep only human beings. Nor can you keep a Christian; you can keep only Christians. Christians need to gather with one another to share what God is doing in their lives. It gives them courage to go on.

The Psalmist also intends to communicate with God through prayer. "Your face, Lord, I will seek," he says. He intends to approach God, not as a force, but as a person! Such communication doesn't have to be in carefully groomed, pious language. In fact, it is more personal if one speaks freely from the heart. In Clarence Day's book God And My Father speaking of his father's peculiar attitude toward God, he says, "In moments of prayer, when (my father) and God tried to commune with each other, it

wasn't his own shortcomings that were brought on the carpet, but God's...He expected a great deal of God...It seemed that God spoiled his plans...This aroused his wrath. He would call God's attention to such things...he didn't actually accuse God of gross inefficiency, but when he prayed his tone was loud..., like that of a dissatisfied guest in a carelessly managed hotel." I am not suggesting that all of our prayers should follow that example. But how refreshing it must be for God to be confronted by a human being who feels confident enough in the relationship to speak plainly about what is on the person's mind. That person has a relationship that gives confidence when shadows fall across the path.
The Psalmist also discovers the importance of conduct. "Teach me your way, O Lord," he says. He is in the process of discovering that religion is not simply a matter of prayers, but of conduct.

P.T. Forsyth, a theologian of another era, wrote about this aspect of religion, saying, "Disincarnate prayers - prayers for others - which permit us not to do anything for them...are a substitute for action, a cheap way of having a good conscience. They are a lie and a hypocrisy. It can seem too easy to pray at the bedside of a sick person, then to depart, leaving him alone with his sickness; to pray for a family in distress without adding to the prayer (what is needed) to resolve the problems; to pray for the peoples of the world who are suffering from famine, oppression, or exploitation, without taking part in the political struggle against social injustice." To take action requires courage. A belief that such activities are part of God's plan for the world encourages us to act.

Worshipping, praying, remembering, acting. It is in the doing of these things that the Psalmist discovers a faith that sustains him and gives him courage. In the King James version of this passage he is translated as saying, "I would have fainted unless I had believed."
Henry Troyat describes a discovery made by the Russian novelist, Tolstoy. One spring day when Tolstoy was walking in the forest, his mind suddenly felt lighter and his whole body began to move more freely through the light-spattered dimness. Intrigued, he observed that he was always sad when he rejected God with his reason and always cheerful when he accepted God like a child. "At the thought of God, happy waves of life welled up inside me," Tolstoy wrote. "Everything came alive, took on meaning. The moment I thought I knew God, I lived. But the moment I forgot Him, the moment I stopped believing, I also stopped living...To know God and to live are the same thing. God is life."

That is what the Psalmist discovered. "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" he concluded. "Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord." What he discovered, we can discover. Learn to see God at work in the world and it will give you courage.