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How can the past speak to the present? How can the ancient
make itself known in the contemporary? Many feel that it cannot --
that nothing can be learned from the past -- that everything to be
learned is in the present and in the future. Perhaps this is
where we have missed the true meaning of life.
The segment of the 23rd Psalm we gaze upon in this chapter is:
"He prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies."
Does it fit anything today? Should we spend time on it? Is there
a truth here we have by-passed in the hurried business of life?
Does God sustain us as we face the grim challenges of life? Does
a table in the presence of our enemies say anything to us?
Recently a medical friend of mine pointed his finger at me and
said: "You preachers ought to build up the faith level of your
people, so that we doctors would not have to build up the
barbiturate level." There is truth here. We have been overlooking
the deep reservoirs of life. We have not realized the spiritual
powers available to us. We do not lean on God's arm; nor do we
fully accept the supporting love of Jesus. So we break down and
we burn out. There is an inner support far beyond scientific
knowledge. God does prepare a table before us in the presence of
our needs. The sustaining love of God is available to us as we
face life's crises.
Life is situation living; it is one episode after another. I
continually find myself in situation after situation at home, at
work, in the neighborhood, in the world. This is where

God meets us -- In the wise handling of immediate situations. He
sustains us in the face of the demands of life, where the
decisions have to be made, when the burdens have to be carried,
where the battles have to be fought -- where the sweat and the
toil and the wrong is. This is where God enters life, preparing a
table of sustenance in the presence of the demands of life.
The picture is a desert scene. According to the code of the
desert if there is a refugee, someone fleeing for his life, you
may receive this individual into your tent and give him
sanctuary, protection. A man fleeing for his life. Perhaps he has
killed someone by accident. And the dead man's family is pursuing
him to take his life. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth," still stands in the desert. The man is fleeing,
exhausted. They are about to overtake him. He sees them topping
out on the last sand dune behind him as he starts down the far
side of this dune. And then, all of a sudden, he sees in the
little valley below him an encampment of Bedouins. He stumbles
down the sand dune and falls on his face in front of the tent of
the sheik. The sheik can pay him no mind and leave him there to
be murdered. But this sheik takes him in, and he is now under the
protection of the sheik. His safety is guaranteed. The sheik will
probably prepare a meal in the little canopy of the tent where
the refugee can sit and be refreshed, while his enemies have to
stay out there on the other side of the line and look on. They
can't come in; he is protected.
"He prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies," does make sense. It is the difference between life and
death. Here the refugee finds strength and hope. The host might
even give him a guard that night after dark and help him sneak
away from his pursuers to permanent safety. We are not in the
desert; but we stumble into all kinds of needy situations; and we
need support in time of crisis. I have caught myself running now
and then; and so have you -- refugees in the midst of life.
Thousands of things pursue us, attack us in this computer,
concrete jungle in which we live. Fearful strains and stresses
attack us. God invades the crisis to give us strength.

We long for that uplifting, infilling power of hope and
assurance where we can catch our breath, realign ourselves, and
step once more into life, free from defeat and despair. God does
not prepare a tremendous, luscious banquet and sit us down to
overeat. He lovingly sustains us. Perhaps he just prepares for us
little snacks of sustenance from battle station to battle station
along the road to life.
All the time we are fighting battles, making decisions,
solving problems, overcoming difficulties. It's rough out here in
the middle of life. It's finding meaning, getting your teeth into
it, producing accomplishments, doing some good for humanity,
finding your purpose in the fabric and structure of life. This is
where God prepares his table to sustain us.
But sometimes we fail to trust him. We are fleeing in the
desert, and just don't believe that God's tent has anything to
offer. We stumble by on our own, alone; and flee on deeper and
deeper into the desert. We are overtaken and destroyed. We could
have turned in, we could have opened up to God in our extremity.
We could have done this just to see if God could make a
difference, if he could sustain us. We would have discovered
reservoirs of life to answer our deepest needs. But we didn't
risk faith; we risked death instead. Maybe we didn't want God to
take hold of our lives. Perhaps we didn't want him to recreate
and reconstruct us. Maybe we were afraid to change. We wanted
things just as they were. But we had no strength, and we
collapsed.
We were fed up with this stupid life, this stupid job, this
stupid struggle to get started every morning, and that stupid
struggle at home every night, this stupid world, and my stupid
self I've got to live with. How did we get caught in this
whirlpool of stupidity? How can we escape from it? We try all
kinds of stupid ways to escape.
It's amazing! God loved this stupid world so much that he sent
Christ to reveal truth and love, to refashion humanity into right
relationships, to bring deep satisfaction into the heart of
individual persons. You know Christ said a strange thing, though
he had been beaten down and crucified by the world.

He said: "Father, don't take these followers of mine out of this
stupid world. Father, don't take them out of the world. I gave my
life for this world. Keep them in this world, that their spirits
touched by thy spirit may bring life to this world. That they may
push back the stupidity, bring back meaning and value, and put a
shout of joy in the heart of man. That they may open to others
the reservoirs of the eternal. That the Jesus Spirit may possess
the life of the world. That justice and love may be real in the
marketplace and in the halls of government." God, preparing
tables before us in the presence of life's demands!
Bishop Welsh lived to be 105 years of age. He deserved a prize
just for living that long. But at 104, he was still thinking,
writing and speaking. Just before he died he wrote an article for
Reader's Digest. Here is what he said: "We look at the world, you
and I. We want fast progress. And we pray, 'How long, O Lord; How
long, how long, O Lord? I can't put up with it. Send us a
miracle, O God. Give us peace, O God, this minute.' "
That's the way we feel. I want peace and a cessation of
terrorism this minute. That's my impatience. I want it right now;
I want it yesterday. But the old Bishop, out of the wisdom of a
hundred years, says: "But God answers by littles. God answers by
littles." Just a little here, and a little there. A step here and
a step there; an inch here and an inch there. But God is moving
with deliberate speed, like the hands of a clock. The bishop
continued: "In life's situations, when we wanted a miracle to
redeem this minute, God sends a baby to redeem the world."
But the Luthers, the Wesleys are awfully far apart; in spite
of this, God moves, and he surprises us. He doesn't turn loose.
He moves inch by inch, mile by mile, century by century, toward
his goals. He doesn't turn loose. He works by littles through us.
So that in a strange way it is we who will redeem this world.
Redeem it through the eternal trust of God. If our city is to be
redeemed, if it is to find goodness and greatness, it will be
redeemed by the people of our city, by the churches

of our city, by those of us who by faith and open hearts are
seeking new meanings and are willing to be different. And all the
while God supplies a bountiful buffet of spiritual food to fuel
us on our way.
This is how the world will find redemption, not in a minute,
but in the slow building of character and vision, in opening the
doors of understanding until people no longer want to hate and
kill, but build each other up in our march toward the kingdom of
God. "He prepares a table before us in the presence of our
enemies."
Perhaps this is the picture as we flee from refugee tent to
refugee tent in our struggle through life; as we find God's table
prepared again and again in our times of extremity, we discover
the reality of God's saving presence. It is then that we begin to
set up tents in the desert for others in extremity; and point
other fleeing refugees from life to the places of refuge and the
sustaining tables of our God.
But too many of us are caught, trapped, in the prevailing
unfaith of today. The climate of today is atheism, agnosticism,
greed. Most of the fiction today follows this trend. It is tragic
that when the best brains of our world could be sweating it out
seeking new and great avenues of truth, they are wasting their
time and our time going round and round on a merry-go-round of
doubt, vulgarity and nothingness. So we read our literature based
on unfaith and pessimism and discover that subconsciously we are
alone in a meaningless, empty universe, going nowhere. We have
chosen to feed at the table of hopeless secularism, while before
us God has prepared a table of life and purpose. There are other
things to read.
David Reed suggests that the word "hopeless" is a blasphemous
word. For when we use that word about any situation or person,
with a flat finality that slams the door, we deny the God of
hope. While hope is alive we feed at the table God has prepared
for us and our hope is strengthened. "Faith," Roy Smith reminds
us, "never closes our eyes to the difficulties; it opens our eyes
to our resources."

If my son will not come to my table, I cannot feed him. And so
with God. If God cuts us off -- that's cruel (but he doesn't). We
are the ones who cut God off -- and that is stupid. All the while
Isaiah points out the truth of Christ back of the life scene:

"Surely he hath borne our griefs,
And carried our sorrows: ...
He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities:
Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole;
And with his stripes we are healed."





Isaiah 53:4-5
A member of my congregation came to me and said, "I don't
believe in God. I don't believe in Christ as revealing the Spirit
of God in the midst of this world. I just don't believe." How did
he get that way? By reading materials with an unbelieving bias.
He had not been reading the scriptures, where God comes alive,
where Christ walks the paths of this earth. He had turned his
back on the table prepared for him. He hadn't come to church; he
hadn't mixed with people who were living a life of faith. He was
intellectual but at a shallow level; he was brilliant but not
wise. He lived in a God-prepared world of plenty, but he was
starving to death. He was just going around in circles; he was
treading water, barely keeping his head above water.
What had happened to him? Every plant that grows has a frost
point. One plant will freeze at 33 degrees, another at 29
degrees, another at 25 degrees. I have snapdragons that have
survived the entire winter, and the temperature has been as low
as eight degrees. This confused man had dropped below his frost
point in his living and reading and thinking. He had frozen. He
had died spiritually; he had forgotten to feed his soul. He was
brainwashed, but not cleansed.
Out of today's agnosticism we hear strange statements.
Recently, someone said to me, referring to the Holy Spirit, "It's
just a term to cover up our ignorance." Where did he get

that? Is it not true that the Holy Spirit is the living God in
the midst of a computer age (or any other age). The spirit of the
living God -- not covering up ignorance, but exposing ignorance.
He is revealing to our brilliant, mixed up minds the simplicities
of truth, love and righteousness. Nothing else answers our
persistent gnawing questions. How stupid can we get? We pass by
the deep clear reservoirs of truth, and drink surface water that
is polluted and has no life in it. Christ has set a table of life
for us in the midst of the struggles of the present moment.
Many of us have lost God; he is just not real anymore. We lost
him in different ways. With some it was a moral problem, with
some an intellectual problem. The big problem is that today many
persons are living by their doubts. They are proud of their
doubt; they worship their unbelief; they are ashamed of faith.
Now doubt has its place. Doubt keeps us from being gullible;
doubt sharpens the concepts of truth by eliminating the false
concepts. Doubt helps us to see the phony, so that we can
concentrate on reality. We live by truth; we die by truth. The
structure of the universe is truth. God helps us to recognize the
truth. To live by doubt is the ultimate despair.
We have doubts; but -- we don't live by them. We have doubts;
but we live by our faith -- what we believe in. We may not have
much faith; but we live by what we really believe in, no matter
how small. This is what you risk your life on; this is what you
give your life to. All of us have a little bit of faith. When we
dare to live by it, make our decisions on this basis, then our
faith grows and our vision of reality expands. And finally we
realize we have come face to face with God.
A few years ago, I sat with a hundred theologians from all
over the world. The seminar was held at Oxford University. We
were trying to sweat out the realities of basic Christian faith.
One evening we listened to Dr. Francis Ayers, head of the
Department of Philosophy at Cambridge. He was perhaps the world's
leading atheist. He spoke brilliantly for two hours on his chosen
theme: "A belief in God is totally unnecessary

for moral and ethical living." We were enchanted by his logic;
but could not agree with his conclusions. At the end of his
address a strange thing happened. He seemed to relax. Apparently
a new thought came to him. He looked at us, a group of
theologians, and he said: "But I cannot compete with you. I have
no hope." And he sat down sadly. Dr. Ayers had been exposed to
God's table of spiritual food, but he had chosen to feed himself
on plastic chips. He was starving to death.
I choose the faith where the hope is. People die when they
have no hope. Christ brought hope both in life and in death. And
hope becomes trust, and trust becomes character, and character is
life. Character also produces right relationships. It all comes
through the spirit. In this tortured world God prepares a table
in the presence of our spiritual needs.
God's table is set to meet the demands of life. As we are
running scared, and stumble breathless before the tent in life's
desert, God quiets us, heals us, cleanses us, strengthens us and
sends us on ready for the next encounter. Jesus had a word for
it:

Come unto me all ye
that labor and are
heavy laden,
And I will give you rest.

Some believe in a static truth. We believe in a living, knowing,
loving, acting truth: a personal, Christ-like God.
A missionary friend told me about flying out of Kabul in
Afghanistan. The mountains rise abruptly around Kabul. I know,
because I've been. And those Russian jets rise very slowly. I
have experienced this. As my friend flew out of Kabul, there was
a Russian diplomat sitting next to him. When these Russian planes
fly over a mountain you are never sure they are going to make it.
As the jet was struggling to get over the mountain with little
room to spare, the diplomat was heard by my friend to whisper:
"God help us; we are not going to make it." The missionary said,
"You are a believer?" The Russian answered, "No, no, I'm a
Communist. That was just

a meaningless expression." But to the missionary, it sounded like
a prayer; maybe it was really an unconscious prayer. Under the
threat of death the prayer just burst out. The philosophy of
Communism just couldn't totally drown out a deeper truth. "O God,
help us." It was there in his subconscious mind. Even for a
Communist there was a table in the presence of extremity. He
almost accepted it.
Science and technology can get the spaceship off the launching
pad and guide it to the moon; they cannot make the astronauts
love each other; they cannot take care of them if reentry fails.
Without God there are devastating limitations to life. By faith I
face the pilgrimage. I see only a little way. The lightning
flashes, I see the road. Then all is blackness, but I believe the
road is still there. The next flash, I see the road again. And as
I go on and on, I feel and know a presence.
By that stone in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knelt at
God's table in the presence of his enemies. He found peace. Some
of our young men found it as they faced death in the fox holes of
Viet Nam. Maybe in such extremities God will show us the path to
peace. Perhaps this table could become a peace table where
enemies could meet in forgiveness and establish justice.
Really, who are these enemies seeking to destroy us? Often
they sneak up and destroy us, even before we know who they are.
What is it that is robbing us of love? What destroys our peace of
mind? What causes the burn-out where I lose the incentive for
life? Do we dare look the enemy in the face? Often we accept a
fake reason rather than the real reason. We blame it on so many
things that are not the cause at all. Perhaps while we catch our
breath under the protection of the Bedouin's tent we can pause
and look back at those shadows that have been pursuing us. We are
shocked to see that their faces are strangely like our own faces.
Some of them are our own doubts, our own blindness, our own
greed, our lack of commitment, our lack of real love, our own
misreading of life. As a recent book put it, "having everything
we ever wanted, we realize that it's not enough." Where does that
deep gnawing hunger come from?

These fake things are trapping us, are keeping us from full
life, are keeping us from digging down into the deep reservoirs
of God where life breaks through, and satisfaction and peace are
experienced. Paul speaks to this computer age, as he faced the
spiritual enemies of his own day:

"I pray that your inward eyes may be illumined, so that you may
know what is the hope to which he calls you, what the wealth and
glory of the share he offers you among his people ... , and how
vast the resources of his power open to us who trust him.
(Ephesians 1:18)

This is the real table that God places before us in the presence
of the real enemies of life. The table is prepared; the
reservoirs of truth, power and love are open to us. The vast
resources of God's inexhaustible power are available to us at any
time, under any circumstances.
"He prepareth a table before me" in the face of our needs. We
come to the table running scared, wounded helpless, hopeless.
That's all right. That's why God prepares the table. We come to
him in extremity, all torn to pieces. God gets with us because we
have come to him. He quiets us down; helps us to see our problem
straight. He cleanses us, heals us, strengthens us and sends us
out into life again, ready for the next encounter. And the
presence will be there also, if we have eyes to see.
We are fed, nourished, sustained for a purpose, not just to
settle down satisfied and full; but to share this great vision of
life with others. To explain it to those who are scared, broken
and hopeless. To rekindle ice-bound hearts, to heal the wounded.
To go and bring hope to those who struggle in the desert. To
unseal the springs of life for humanity. To tell them about the
vast resources of God's power open to them, open to them who
trust him.

"He prepareth a table before us in the presence of our enemies."

John describes the ultimate table that God has prepared:

And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes;
And there shall be no more death;
neither sorrow, nor crying,
Neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.
(Revelation 21:4)