From the Foe

I won’t call this a New Year resolution, but something MUST be done.  Last year was a long and stress-filled year.  I gained weight; a lot of weight.  And it seemed rather sudden.  So, a change to a mostly plant based diet replacing sauces with spices is just part of the required change.

I’m again walking at the vacant mall near the office every day as well.  Typically, I listen to Pandora while trudging past empty store fronts. It gives me something to concentrate on because those empty retail spaces use their display glass to reflect back to me what I actually look like. I do NOT want to look!

After plugging into the app, I started my daily journey hearing the words “You guard me from the foe”.  This is part of the refrain from You Are Near, by David Schutte. In a previous life, this favorite had been sung in choir countless times.



I always find it interesting when something that could be considered routine rises up and smacks me in the face with something I just never noticed before.

Today, it was part of the refrain.

Yahweh, I know you are near
Standing always at my side
You guard me from the foe
And you lead me, in ways everlasting.

It’s that third line I can’t get out of my mind in music or text. This 6 word sentence was convicting;

• We spend a lot of time judging and deciding who has worth and who does not.
• We spend a lot of energy deciding whether or not someone is good or they fail the test.
• We spend a lot of emotional currency making a case that we are right and the others are well, wrong.

We seem to gravitate toward making walls between ourselves and others.  We seem to collect these walls as badges of honor; we make ourselves more important, we make ourselves more spiritual, we make ourselves wiser and more intelligent than those we know and even those we don’t.

That one spectacular line and its melody remind me that we’re told;
“our struggle is not against flesh and blood”.  Ephesians 6:12

That one spectacular line and its melody remind me clearly that the word 'foe' is not plural but singular.  In this life, we have but ONE foe and it’s NEVER our human brothers and sisters.

I think that sometimes, it’s a good thing when a song gets ’stuck in my head'.