I had the opportunity last night to watch a sports documentary on two of my favorite baseball players growing up as a young kid in the 80’s, Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry.  Still to this day I have a notebook of baseball cards with 4 pages of Daryl Strawberry! Yet both of them would run into very hard times, stemming from not being able to overcome “the enemies” of their childhood…

Sometimes it can be hard to process a rough upbringing, especially in wanting to honor our parents, and not look at them as “enemies”.  But anyone can be “an enemy” when they repress what would be beneficial to our well being.  They can become an enemy of our peace and security, even if they are our parents!

This was the context of what these two famous baseball players grew up in.  Never able to really process why they were allowed to “go about mourning” the wounds from their parents, oppressing them as an enemy would.  So in their response they turned to drugs and alcohol to suppress the rejection, to lead them down a very dark path…

David here in the Psalms shares the same feelings of rejection from God!  Wanting to know why the Lord is allowing such oppression from his enemies.  But by God’s grace, David makes a decision to be led by His light and truth, and not allow his confusion to derail him.  Unlike David, the two ballplayers at the time were devoid of Christ to overpower their struggles, and lead them into the light of Christ and His truth…

You eventually come to realize that without grace to lead us into the light of Christ, we don’t know where we are going?  Our path may not be hard drugs and alcohol abuse, but it maybe a dark “dwelling place”, void of the security and acceptance that Christ has in His grace and truth.

In His Love, Ld