Have you ever been betrayed? Whenever I think of someone being betrayed, I think about Julius Caesar and how he was betrayed by someone very close to him, Brutus. I remember having to read this play by Shakespeare in high school and then I remember the teacher selecting a group of people to reenact the betrayal scene. A not so comedic moment in history turned into a barrel of laughs as the weapon of choice, a yardstick, was plunged in between the side and arm of my classmate. As he stumbled around, over dramatically knocking things all over the place, he turned to the classmate playing Brutus and said the famous line, “Et tu, Brute?” and then he fell on the ground. While this one example was comedic, betrayal of any kind is no laughing matter. It hurts deeply. Most of the time it comes out of the blue, it’s unexpected and it knocks you on your feet. I was handed a letter from someone I considered a friend. The contents of the letter would tell me otherwise. He took it upon himself to list everything he didn’t like about me, in great detail. It was mean and it was meant to be hurtful. I cried a lot. I internalized all that he said and believed it to be true. (It wasn’t) I held onto that for a very long time, refusing to even let go of the letter, reminding myself of what others thought of me. They were all lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Meant to destroy me, and they did. I was deeply hurt by someone I trusted and cared about. This was a wound that wasn’t going to heal quickly. I am thankful that I had friends, whom I hadn’t even been friends with long, who stood up for me and told me that all of those things in the letter, written to hurt me, were not true. They told me that they didn’t see any of those things about me because they loved me. The love I felt from them helped to heal the hurt I felt at the hands of my so-called “friend”. In Psalm 54, David is once again surrounded by his enemies, but he is trusting in God to rescue him and deal with his enemies as they deserve to be dealt with. “For strangers are attacking me; violent people are trying to kill me. They care nothing about God. But God is my helper. The Lord keeps my alive! May the evil plans of my enemies be turned against them. Do as you promised and put an end to them” (3-5) What constantly amazes me about David is that even in the midst of difficulty, he never forgets to praise God, the source of his strength, peace, and hope. “I will sacrifice a voluntary offering to you; I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from my troubles and helped me to triumph over my enemies” (6-7) Praising God in the midst of our difficult circumstances, is the key. It is our circumstances that change, not God. Our circumstances get difficult, not God. He remains the same. If you are going through a difficult time right now, stop what you are doing, stop dwelling on your circumstances and stop dwelling on the people that have hurt you and praise the God that never changes and remains the same. The very same God who holds you close, and who rescues you from your enemies. He loves you, greatly! Why not praise him for that?
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