What is Psalm 34 all about?
My affliction and my deliverance
Do you know what Psalms 34 is all about?
Maybe you are about to fetch your Bible or navigate to your Bible App. Maybe it’s your favorite Bible text and you’ve already started to recite it.
For me, it’s a song, a testimony and a vehicle that took me from a place of pain and grief to a destination of praise and solace.
Psalms 34 found me
I was offered a ride home after a long day of errands. I replayed what happened at the funeral home in my mind as the music in the car was being played. It was gospel, so I didn’t mind. We chatted but then the lyrics from the song started to pull me in. I made a note of the song and that’s how my journey with Psalms 34 (the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir’s version) started.
Psalms 34 kept me
I listened to the song as though I had nothing else to occupy my time, no other song to play, no other music to dance to and no other lyrics to sing. You would be convinced that I was going crazy but on the contrary this beautiful Psalm was keeping me sane.
For me Psalms 34 is mingled with pungent and pleasant realities. It made its way to me at a time when death and life, loss and gain, distress and comfort, sadness and praise, disbelief and faith all came crashing into each other.
Death and life
A tragic event juxtaposed by a sentence to the Intensive Care Unit became punctuated with death. With the aid of a few bullets, a gun and its operator death rudely interrupted life as I knew it. Normalcy took its unannounced leave of absence and chaos quickly filled the vacancy it had left behind.
Loss and gain
Loss has painted a dark chapter in my life. I have been robbed of his: company, expert advice, skillfulness and laughter. No fond farewell, no final embrace, he crept out of my life limb by limb the same way his warmth crept out of his body. He laid there motionless as the cold took over. He’s frozen by the touch of death and gone forever.
Amid this terrible loss I was forced to gain courage and tenacity. These, coupled with my new favorite song has taught me how to endure in faith.
Disbelief and faith
In difficult times faith may become elusive. Doubt may creep in and you start to question what was, what is and what will be. This is when the words, “O taste and see that the lord is good” start to have meaning. Death has a bitter taste but I have to admit it is in the darkest of times and the most bitter experiences that I tasted and saw the goodness of God.
I came to realize that amid all that had happened the tragic story could have been worst. Multiple lives could have been lost as a result of the calamity that had taken place but the situation played out differently. I could have been overtaken by bitterness, anger and vengeance, but I dispelled all the negativity and kept Psalms 34 as a song in my heart.
Distress and Comfort
It’s amazing how a simple song/Psalm could motivate. This is a situation where most people cried and ask why. Why Lord, why? But for the strangest reason I felt it unnecessary to cry or ask why because I found solace in Nehemiah’s directive, ‘neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the lord is your strength”. I was comforted because I took the joy of the Lord as my strength and I took the strength of the Lord as my joy.
Sadness and Praise
Looking back I realize now that a simple Psalm, a simple song was what kept me going. The clapping, the rocking, the dancing, the singing and stomping to the beat of the drum kept me above ground. It dispelled the clouds of sadness while creating an atmosphere of praise.
In a season of my life when the storms of death, the winds of loss, the floods of distress and the clouds of disbelief tried to bury me I managed not just to stay above ground, but to soar.
The wings of Psalm 34 allowed me to ascend into the hills of faith. To rise atop the clouds of comfort and above it all I soared in the skies of praise.
[I will] bless the Lord every day and night never ending praise…
Psalms 34 was the voice in the cold silence. The type of silence that freezes you when you realize a loved one would have: said his lasts words, made his final request, think his last thought, looked his last peek, felt his last embrace and released his last breath. It was a distinct voice amid all the muttering, noise and chaos. It is the light throughout a dark chapter of my life.
Psalms 34: 19 “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all”
Psalms 34 is all about my affliction and how I found deliverance.
