Psalm 124
Memory verse: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” – Psalm 124:8
Marcus hadn’t thought about the accident in months, which was strange, because for a while it was the only thing he could think about. Two years ago, a truck had run a red light and clipped the back of his car on the highway, sending him spinning across three lanes. By the time his car stopped, he was facing oncoming traffic, engine stalled, and somehow not a single car behind him had hit him before he got it restarted and off the road.
For weeks afterward he replayed it constantly, shaking at the memory. Then life moved on, as it does, and the memory faded into the background of everyday things.
One evening, stuck in a different kind of trouble, waiting on a diagnosis that could alter his life, he found himself spiraling into fear. Almost without deciding to, he thought back to the highway. The spinning car. The empty lane that should have had cars in it. He said out loud, to no one, “If it hadn’t been for God that day, I wouldn’t be here to worry about this.” And something in him steadied, not because the new trouble disappeared, but because he remembered he had been kept before.
Psalm 124 is built entirely around that same kind of remembering. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive.
The psalmist does not describe the danger in vague terms. He uses the language of flood and torrent, of being caught in a snare and nearly swallowed whole. And then, with the danger still vivid in his mind, he turns the whole psalm toward praise. Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
God takes delight in saving
Scripture describes God not merely as one who saves when convenient, but as one who delights in it. Psalm 18:19 says he brought me out into a broad place, he rescued me, because he delighted in me. Zephaniah 3:17 pushes further still. He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will exult over you with loud singing. God does not grudgingly tolerate the work of saving his people. He sings over it.
This reframes what preservation means. Marcus’s highway moment was not a lucky break God happened to allow. It was the kind of rescue God delights in performing, the same as every near miss, every door closed just in time.
But scripture also treats forgetting that rescue as a genuine danger. Deuteronomy 8:2 instructs Israel to remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you, so they would not grow forgetful once comfort returned. Psalm 103:2 commands it directly. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
The danger is rarely sudden unbelief. It is slow erosion, where yesterday’s rescue quietly stops counting as evidence for today’s fear. Marcus had lived two years without thinking of the highway, until a new fear forced the memory back up. The psalmist reminds us to deloberately rehash the rescue so gratitude is not left to chance.
Reflection questions
- What is a moment in your life where, looking back, you can clearly say “if it had not been the Lord”?
- Why do you think it is so easy to forget past deliverance once a season of comfort returns?
- What would it look like to deliberately rehearse your past rescues the way Psalm 124 does, especially in a season of new fear?
Prayer
Lord, thank you for the times you have kept me when I did not even understand the danger I was in. Forgive me for how quickly I forget. Help me remember, the way Psalm 124 remembers, so that my fear today is met with the evidence of your faithfulness yesterday. Our help is in your name, the maker of heaven and earth.
Closing thought
Every survived danger is not luck. It is a God who delights in saving his children, and who asks only that we remember it the next time fear rises.
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