Word of Encouragement (5/26/2026)

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. (Ps. 27:7-10)

Because David could not sense God’s presence, he desperately prayed, “Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation!” Then, he said, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” This is a touching statement, but many are puzzled by it. Seeing that this is a Psalm of David, we cannot help but wonder about the historical veracity of this statement. Was he ever forsaken by his parents? What we read in the Bible is that “David departed from [Gath in Philistia] and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him” (1 Sam. 22:1).

But we have no reason to believe that David was lying here, especially about his own parents. And just because the Bible doesn’t mention something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Obviously, if not even all the signs Jesus had performed were recorded in the Bible (John 20:30), we cannot expect everything that happened to David to be mentioned in the Bible. It is true that what David says in today’s passage is not mentioned in the Historical Books of the Bible. But he does mention it in this Psalm, and we don’t have to question its veracity.

We can imagine how poignant the incident must have been for David. One’s first experience of love, possibly the greatest human love one can ever receive, is from the parents. Psychologists tell us how foundational and life-shaping that parent-child connection is. Imagine how devastating it is for a child to be abandoned by his parents. Of course, by the time David experienced it, he was an adult, no longer a helpless child. But the impact of the trauma may not be any less, though different.

Few things are more devastating in life than to be forsaken by one’s own parents. How can one recover from such a trauma? But many will testify to the profound comfort and peace that God’s presence affords. What kept David steady through such a heartbreaking situation was the assurance that the Lord would not abandon him but take him in. Oh, the pain of being forsaken by one’s own parents! But who can describe the feeling of being taken in and embraced by the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth! “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isa. 49:15).

This is not simply because God is omniscient. Ultimately, it is because God loved us to the point of sacrificing His only begotten Son, and Christ has reconciled us to God through His sacrificial death for our sins. He is indeed the God of our salvation, and He is worthy of our trust and gratitude for all eternity.