¹ May the LORD answer you when you are in distress;
may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.

² May he send you help from the sanctuary
and grant you support from Zion.

³ May he remember all your sacrifices
and accept your burnt offerings.
Selah

⁴ May he give you the desire of your heart
and make all your plans succeed.

⁵ We will shout for joy when you are victorious
and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the LORD grant all your requests.

⁶ Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed;
he answers him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.

⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

⁸ They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.

⁹ O LORD, save the king!
Answer us when we call!

One of the former pastors in my church had a nice benediction that he spoke after every service. I don’t remember all of it, for it was a long time ago and he has long since retired and left the church and gone somewhere else. He said, “May the LORD’s face shine upon you and give you peace.” It made me feel happy and blessed. I was maybe 10 or 11 at the time.

Psalm 20 is basically a benediction. “May the LORD answer you when you are in distress…” There are a total of five verses that continue in this manner.

The first two verses concern crying out to God. When we cry out in distress, God answers. He sends us help from His sanctuary and grants support. We’ve seen from earlier psalms that God is the God who answered David’s cry for help. He does the same for us in this present day. He has come to my rescue when I called in the past, and He will continue to do so in the future.

I know a young woman who knew about “crying out to God.” When she was a girl, whenever she had an exam, she’d pray to God to “kill her textbooks.” Later she realized that God does not kill textbooks. Instead He supplies His people with the wisdom and grace to keep on going even when it’s hard. And motivation as well, I daresay.

Verse three talks about sacrifices and burnt offerings. IN those days, sacrifices were done as appreciation for what God had done as well as to atone for sins. I think burnt offerings were the former while sacrifices were the latter — to atone and acknowledge wrong doing.

Verse four happens to be one of my personal favorites.

May he give you all the desires of your heart and make your plans succeed.

What is the desire of your heart? I have had many desires, not all of them wholesome. But I desire to serve God to the end of my days. There’s another, deep desire of my heart that I’ve yearned for for many years now.

Verse five has an interesting phrase: “May the LORD grant all your requests.” All? All? Not all, I bet. The godly ones, yeah… concerning who the psalms were generally aimed at that would make sense.

Verses six and seven focus on where our trust should go. Some trust in chariots and horses. Others in God. Guess which are the first to fall? Or rather, which are the only ones to fall?

Chariots and horses were a sign of wealth and rank. People sat on a donkey or walked. Not many could afford to have chariots. Chariots were like Mercedes Benz. Those with chariots owned the road. (Make way! Make way!) Most of those driving chariots were rich and important. They could afford not to walk. Others, like the eunuch that Philip encountered, borrowed their rich and important masters’ chariots and horses on rich and important business. Horses ate, so those who owned a horse had to pay a lot to keep them healthy and happy, like now. Someone with lots of horses was rich and important. Plus you need something to pull the chariot and there’s nothing better than a horse.

People envied the one with lots of horses and chariots.

If you wanted to give an impressive gift, you gave someone a horse or two.

Paris Hilton in the horror movie House of Wax. She was the first character to get killed.

Things like wealth and rank are soon forgotten, however. Many of the rich and important have died poor and forgotten. Wealth can be lost. Just gamble wildly. Rank can be lost. Offend someone higher up and it’s all gone. Will the nauseatingly wealthy Paris Hilton be remembered for long? Maybe, maybe not. However, it’s true that even now there are those who only know Paris Hilton from her sex tapes. Following the trends that have come to pass, it looks like she’ll someday be lost somewhere, known only as that rich girl who made a sex tape. Probably replaced by yet another sickeningly rich young woman who does crazier things. Believe it or not, Paris Hilton will get old someday.

And someday, those things will fall. Wealth and rank will have no meaning. To those who allowed their wealth and rank to define them and become the very meaning of their existence will be a bleak future.

What about us? That’s up to us to make the right choices.

Picture credits: WTL photos, Richard Monteverde, MinivanNinja, Ezra Casteel, and Cowboy Dave under a Creative Commons license.