...who trains my hands for war...

         I had been stalled on the first verse of the 144th Psalm for the last 24 hours, just reading, rereading and meditating on it. David wrote:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle.

         It's been said that this was the favorite verse of Robert E. Lee, and Martin Sheen utters these lines in his portayal of Lee in a scene from the film Gettysburg, but they are King David's words, inspired by God, for His children, to sing and receive His blessing in doing so. In our church service this morning we sang two songs from the 18th Psalm which is very similar in meaning to the 144th Psalm. John Calvin thought the difference in the two was primarily in that King David was "triumphant throughout" the 18th Psalm but in the 144th Psalm there is a sense of "fear and anxiety, there being some remaining enemies to cause him apprehension."  The 144th Psalm continues:

he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.

and...

Stretch out your hand from on high;
rescue me and deliver me from the many waters,
from the hand of foreigners,
whose mouths speak lies
and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

         When I read these lines, my mind did not race to America's armies and war, nor did it even go to spiritual warfare where it more rightly belongs, but rather to America's nearing collapse along with the futures of our children. It went to a state religion where Christ was barred from its pulpits, to state armies of Brown Shirts keeping the people in line, to a new constitution protecting Mother Earth while devising means to hasten the deaths of the young, the old and the useless...this to insure leisure time for those who sign on to this more progressive America.. Most Americans haven't the slightest idea how close they are to this scenario. The television tells them, both directly through news and documentaries, and indirectly through its vast assortment of entertainment programming that fundamentalists are intolerant, hateful, small-minded and divisive...and many Americans believe it. Anyone who believes the Bible to be the Living Word of God is a fundamentalist to them, and only the pronouncer of liberal theology is welcome in their courts. This new vigilant atheist thinks that they are ushering Christ out of the door but are oblivious to His power that alone permits even their blasphemous utterings. David's words were not written to us but they can be applied to Christians in the midst of conflict, as would his prayer and his vow:

I will sing a new song to you, O God;
upon a ten stringed harp I will play to you.

         King David's prayer was really no different in essence than one that I would give, or have given, or presumably you, or any of our God-fearing leaders would give as we call out to God in times of trouble:

May our sons in their youth
be like plants full grown,
our daughters like corner pillars
cut for the structure of a palace;
may our granaries be full,
providing all kinds of produce;
may our sheep bring forth thousands
and ten thousands in our fields
may our cattle be heavy with young,
suffering no mishap or failure in bearing,
may there be no cry of distress in our streets!
Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall!
Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

         Our nation is crumbling. We  may not have started it but are no less to blame for we were not vigilant, and more importantly our reverance for God had waned as we prospered and with no one more than I. We are indeed in the middle of the battlefield of desires vs consequences. It's fought in the halls of Congress, the boardrooms of  executives, denominational synods, the ivory towers and ivy covered walls of Higher Education, and in the playing fields of our own minds. Ignore it if you want but should the news from the front concern you, or cause you to tremble, it would behoove you and I and everyone concerned to pray as Kind David did; only for us it would be for the warfare of a sound mind and determination vs chaos and surrender:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle.....