Moving through the Psalms of Ascent, the songs sung by the Israelites as they went up to Jerusalem, we come to Psalm 124, which Eugene Peterson aptly entitles HELP. Here it is:

• If GOD hadn’t been for us —all together now, Israel, sing out!— If GOD hadn’t been for us when everyone went against us, We would have been swallowed alive by their violent anger, Swept away by the flood of rage, drowned in the torrent; We would have lost our lives in the wild, raging water. (1 – 5)
• Oh, blessed be GOD! He didn’t go off and leave us. He didn’t abandon us defenseless, helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs. (6)
• We’ve flown free from their fangs, free of their traps, free as a bird. Their grip is broken; we’re free as a bird in flight. (7)
• GOD’s strong name is our help, the same GOD who made heaven and earth. (8, MSG)

Peterson writes:

Psalm 124 is a song of hazard—and of help. Among the Songs of Ascents, sung by the people of God on the way of faith, this is one that better than any other describes the hazardous work of all discipleship and declares the help that is always experienced at the hand of God.

The first lines of the psalm twice describe God as “for us.” The last line is “GOD’s strong name is our help, the same GOD who made heaven and earth.” God is for us. God is our help.

He goes on to describe the problem of “If God is our help, why did such and such happen?” The answer, essentially, is that God doesn’t promise deliverance FROM adversity but THROUGH adversity.

God’s help is described by means of two illustrations. The people were in danger of being swallowed up alive; and they were in danger of being drowned by a flood. The first picture is of an enormous dragon or sea monster. Nobody has ever seen a dragon, but everybody (especially children) knows they exist. Dragons are projections of our fears, horrible constructions of all that might hurt us. A dragon is total evil. A peasant confronted by a magnificent dragon is completely outclassed. There is no escape: the dragon’s thick skin, fiery mouth, lashing serpentine tail, and insatiable greed and lust sign an immediate doom.

The second picture, the flood, speaks of sudden disaster. In the Middle East, watercourses that have eroded the countryside are all interconnected by an intricate gravitational system. A sudden storm fills these little gullies with water, they feed into one another, and in a very few minutes a torrential flash flood is produced. During the rainy season, such unannounced catastrophes pose great danger for persons who live in these desert areas. There is no escaping. One minute you are well and happy and making plans for the future; the next minute the entire world is disarranged by a catastrophe.

The psalmist is not a person talking about the good life, how God has kept him out of all difficulty. This person has gone through the worst—the dragon’s mouth, the flood’s torrent—and finds himself intact. He was not abandoned but helped. The final strength is not in the dragon or in the flood but in God who “didn’t go off and leave us.”

That’s a good word:

He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1.10, ESV)

Also at that time, people will say, “Look at what’s happened! This is our God! We waited for him and he showed up and saved us! (Isaiah 25.9, MSG)