Psalms in Lent: Psalm 57 Mothers Day Plus

This amazing Psalm begins with the experience that we have all known as the Covid-19 pandemic: disaster barrels through in the manner of a great storm.

For peoples across the world there is nothing new about this, natural disaster, famine, plague, war and ethnic persecution.  For the people of the early/mid 20th century in the UK it came in the form of World Wars.  Yet for people in my generation in the West the coronavirus pandemic has introduced us to the experience this psalm begins in - helplessness in an incoming storm.

The remedy the Psalmist enjoys is the shelter of the wings of God, a motherly picture for Mothering Sunday.

Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,

    for in you I take refuge.

I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings

    until the disaster has passed. (1)

How cosy is that?

But this Psalm is far from finished.  It unfolds a view of God which is infinitely greater than the mother bird's wings, ending (10,11):

For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;

    your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;

    let your glory be over all the earth.

What kind of God is above the heavens and underneath the storm at the same time?  What kind of God can shelter me personally, but also dwarf everything?

The God of the Universe who is the God of the Cross.

Foundling Hospital

Growing up attending Church services yields surprising snippets of information.  This is because during seemingly interminable sermons and sometimes prayers, and lacking the multiple resources of mobile phones, the hymnbook became a permissible and available distraction.  So, for example, I always know (but never need to know) that Charles Wesley lived from 1707 to 1788 because on so many pages a hymn ended;

Charles Wesley 1707-88

More mysteriously an occasional hymn hinted at more exotic origins: Scottish Psalter or Latin 4th Century. And then, in a riddle I have only solved in very recent years, Foundling Hospital Collection. 

This Mothers' Day at Church we thought about the story of London's foundlings, children who were taken in to the Foundling Hospital when a mother could or would no longer care for them.  Great chapel services at the Hospital demanded a hymnbook and this hymn, anonymously written, first appeared there.

We reflected on Psalm 27:10 - Though my father and mother forsake me, Yahweh (the Lord) will receive me.  No human being needs to be entirely abandoned, whatever the vagaries of family or city life may inflict upon them.  It was part of London's story then.  Praise God that in very many ways it remains part of London's story in the 21st century through countless agencies of Christian goodwill to the needy of this metropolis.