Tunnel Vision

December 28, 2022
By Rev. Steve Norman
 
The wicked are waiting to destroy me, but I will ponder your statutes. (Ps. 119:95)
 
When she was a young mom, my sister and her husband lived in a three-flat apartment building in downtown Chicago. They lived on the upper floor and rented the first two levels to tenants. One winter night, while she, her husband, and infant son where sleeping, the fire alarm began to wail. In a panic, she put on her winter jacket and grabbed her son from his crib. Before she opened the door to make her escape down the exterior stairs of the building, her husband calmly said, “Honey, you might want to put on some pants!” She did, and they made their way to safety.
 
In a crisis it’s easy to get tunnel vision. It’s hard to see anything other than the immediate threat. Our body goes into “fight or flight” mode. The psalmist, however, wrote that in the face of immediate danger, he was not flustered by the enemies who stalked him. He said, “Even if I’m threatened, I won’t obsess over possible harm. I’ll think about your statutes.”
 
This passage echoes Psalm 23, where the writer suggested God was so faithful to him, he even set a table for him in the presence of his enemies. Both writers declared that God made a spiritual oasis for them amidst their personal crises. They would trust him, even if they didn’t know when or how he would deliver them.