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Viewpoint from Pastor Mark Borrett 13/03/2020
 Pastor Mark Borrett
Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft churches
South England Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
as published in the Yarmouth Mercury
One of my favourite books in the Bible is Psalms. If you google the word ‘Psalms’ you will find that the main description given is of “a collection of sacred songs or hymns”. But in reality, the book of Psalms is so much more. When we read a Psalm, and there are 150 of them to choose from, we are reading about the real-life experiences, good and bad, of a person of faith. Nothing dull about that!
 A vivid example of this is Psalms 3. It is written by King David, who reigned over the kingdom of Israel, in the early part of the 10th Century BCE. The Psalm contains a very helpful heading annotation, “A Psalm of David When He Fled from Absalom His Son”. The whole context of the Psalm is in that heading. It is written by a father in the midst of a terribly broken relationship with his son. The relationship was so broken that David’s son, Absalom, had turned the hearts of the people away from David to himself, and David had to flee for his life from the capital, Jerusalem. David crossed the Kidron Brook to the east of Jerusalem and fled into the wilderness. It was at that time that David wrote Psalm 3. David begins the Psalm with “O LORD, I have so many enemies; so many are against me” (New Living Translation). David ends the Psalm with “Victory comes from you, O LORD. May you bless your people” (New Living Translation). Which is quite a statement of faith and trust in the midst of an imminent threat to life
 Remember that David here, was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some 1000 years later, Jesus crossed that same Kidron Brook after celebrating his final Passover meal with his small group of disciples. He went onto the Mount of Olives and into the Garden of Gethsemane. He had also been rejected by his people, their hearts had been turned against Him and there was now a very real imminent threat to His life. Jesus knew all these things and yet He did not flee. Rather He stayed and prayed, while His disciples slept. Jesus placed His will into the will of His Heavenly Father, which led to His death on the cross for us and His resurrections three days later, which we celebrate as Easter Sunday
photo is of Mark and his wife, Norma; courtesy of Michael Walker
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