Defenselessness

Psalm 20
Journal entry dated March 13, 2005

"Some rely on horses, others on chariots, but we count on the name of the Lord our God."

Some rely on tanks, others on machine guns; some rely on bombs, others on missiles; some rely on the weapons and implements of war, but we count on the name of the Lord our God.

To the psalmist, confidence in the name of the Lord does not mean divesting oneself of the weapons of war, but simply not placing one's faith in them. There is an exuberant pre-exilic confidence about this psalms, a kind of unexamined and as-yet-untested assurance that God will always send help from Sion, that God's armies will always triumph.

Some rely on nuclear weapons, others on missile defense systems, but we...

...what do we rely on?

Do we have the faith to make ourselves defenseless, to disarm ourselves even in the face of imminent threat?