The Lord supports us in our time of need

Psalm 94:18-19 (NLT)

18 I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me. 19 When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.

The psalmist and the people there were under persecution and oppression. The psalm is an appeal to God to appear against their enemies.   In the verses above we see the psalmist at times feels as though he is slipping away, but God pulls him back from the despair and gives him hope.

In a recent news story, Antoinette Tuff hailed as ‘true hero’ for handling Georgia school gunman, [Greg Botelho, Vivian Kuo, and Josh Levs, www.cnn.com, August 22, 2013.]

A man slips behind someone else into a packed elementary school with an AK-47-type weapon. He goes into the office and shoots at the ground, then darts between there and outside to fire at approaching police.

So what do you do?

If you're Antoinette Tuff, who works in the front office at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy just outside Atlanta, you don't run. You talk. You divulge your personal struggles to the gunman, you tell him you love him, you even proactively offer to walk outside with him to surrender so police won't shoot.

And then the nightmare ends with the suspect, later identified as Michael Brandon Hill, taken into custody and no one inside or outside the Decatur school even hurt, despite the gunfire.

"Let me tell you something, babe," Tuff tells the dispatcher, Kendra McCray, at the end of the dramatic 911 call that recounts her minutes of valor and terror. "I've never been so scared in all the days of my life. Oh, Jesus."

I listened to Antoinette’s story as she told it. She was scared and said she was praying through the entire ordeal. The Lord held her firm as she comforted and reassured the young man with the gun that he was loved and that many people went through difficulties. God was supporting her and even through doubts may have filled her mind that anything could happen she was renewed with hope and cheer as she was able to persuade the young man to lay down his weapon and peacefully give himself up to authorities.

The psalmist reminds us, I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me.  When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.