‘For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall never be shaken….
On God rests my deliverance and my honour;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.’
(from New Revised Standard Version)
Wales has plenty of strong castles, many built by the Normans to keep the Welsh out. Driving round the bend past Pembroke Castle you can’t help but notice the massive walls, built onto solid rock. The first castle was built of wood but it withstood a long siege by the Welsh in the 11th century. After that William Marshall put up massive stone walls in the 12th century and over the years they were strengthened and extended. The castle survived various attacks but was finally breached in 1648 then Oliver Cromwell took the castle after a seven-week siege.
Masada in South-East Israel is another such stronghold, built on the top of of a mountain with sheer unscalable walls 1,424 feet above the Dead Sea. It protected 1,000 people (men, women, and children) for two years against a Roman Army of 15,000 men, but eventually they were overcome when the Romans built a massive ramp of earth and stone to the top of the mountain, only to find that the defenders had decided to kill themselves rather than be enslaved.
Psalm 62 uses the image of a fortress built on rock as an image of God. Even the most massive of human strongholds as we can see fall at some stage, only God’s strength is unshakeable and cannot be destroyed. We need to put all our trust in Him as our sole protector at this time, and as the psalm says “pour out our heart” to Him.
Father God,
all too often we put our trust in the
things of this world.
Help us to learn to trust only in you,
our Saviour and our Defender.
Protect us from the Corona Virus
and its economic effects upon
individuals and on our country,
both at this time, and in the future.
Amen.