I have watched this animal for my whole life and I want to report the results, because they are relevant.
Bucky is not afraid of the tractor. He is not afraid of the dog at the Marsh place, who is a considerable dog. He is not afraid of thunder, or of the gun going off in the top wood at pigeons, or of a truck reversing, or of Deacon Wattles inflating at him from about three feet, which would frighten a person.
He is not afraid of the vet, and she has done things to him that I would be afraid of.
For a long time I thought this made him brave and I thought about it in a way that made me feel worse about myself, and I did not tell anybody I was doing that because it sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud: I am nine and I have been quietly comparing myself to a goat.
But it is not ridiculous. It is exactly what a person does. You look at somebody who does not seem to mind and you conclude that they have got something you have not got.
What I have worked out is this, and it took me about a year.
Bucky is not brave. Being brave requires being frightened first, and he does not have the first part, so he cannot have the second part. He is not overcoming anything. There is nothing there to overcome.
I tested it, in a way. I asked myself what the bravest thing he had ever done was, and I could not think of one, because every single thing he has ever done that looked brave was just a thing he did without noticing, and afterward he stood there chewing.
Rudy, by comparison, is frightened of nearly everything and does his dance anyway, in front of people, having never once been good at the thing he is actually for. Rudy is the bravest one on this farm and I would say that to anybody.
My dad said, when I told him about the year of thinking, that a stone is not brave for sitting still in a river.
The verse has three verbs and a direction
David writes a short line about a specific occasion and the verbs are in order.
I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:4)
Sought. Heard. Delivered. And the object at the end is my fears, which means the fears were present, were his, and were the thing he was taken out of.
He does not say the LORD showed him there had been nothing to fear. He does not say he stopped being the sort of person who is afraid. He says he was delivered from them, which is a rescue word and requires that there was something to be rescued out of.
You are somebody with real fears who is being delivered rather than somebody who ought to have had none, and Psalm 34:4 uses a rescue word. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as dignity instead of as failure.
Which settles the whole comparison. A creature with no fear has nothing to be delivered from, and delivering is what God is described as doing, which means the one with no fear is not further along, they are simply outside the transaction.
You have not been left behind by anybody who feels nothing. The written word attaches the deliverance to the presence of fear, and His Spirit is what makes that a completely different arithmetic from the one a person does on their own.
What the psalm was written about
The heading on that psalm is one of the strangest in the book and it changes everything about the verse.
It was written after David escaped from a foreign king by pretending to be mad. He scrabbled at the doors of the gate and let spit run down his beard and was thrown out as a lunatic, and that is the occasion, and this is the psalm he wrote afterward.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. (Psalm 34:6)
This poor man. He is describing himself, three verses after the one everybody quotes, and the thing he is describing is not a heroic escape.
You are allowed to have got out of something in an undignified way and still call it deliverance. Psalm 34:6 has a man calling himself poor about an episode nobody would put on a wall, and the Spirit of God is what makes that honesty something to lean on.
And the invitation in the middle of the psalm is famously physical: O taste and see that the LORD is good.
You have been invited to find this out rather than to be told it. Psalm 34:8 uses two of the senses instead of an argument, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a page into a boy in a yard who has been thinking for a year.
So here is a year of thinking about a goat, in one paragraph.
You are not behind somebody who has never once been frightened, and Psalm 34:4 attaches deliverance to fears that were genuinely there. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a consolation and makes it the actual arithmetic.
Rudy is the bravest one on this farm. I want that on the record because it is the whole conclusion. He is frightened of nearly everything and he dances in front of people anyway, having never once been good at the thing a rooster is for, and there is more courage in one of those mornings than in Bucky's entire life.
You have been sought and heard and delivered, in that order, and every one of those requires something real to be happening. Psalm 34:4 is a rescue sentence and rescue means there was something to be taken out of, and His Spirit is what makes that dignity rather than a diagnosis.
And this is for whoever is reading it out, who compares themselves to somebody who seems not to mind. You were never looking at a fair comparison. Psalm 34:6 has a man calling himself poor about the least dignified escape in the whole book, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an honest account better company than an impressive one.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over a comparison is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God is described as delivering people from fears they actually had, so speak to the comparison: you have standing to address it because He is the one doing the delivering. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Psalm 34:4 and Psalm 34:6 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Comparison with somebody who feels nothing, you are not fair. The Word of God says I sought the LORD and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears, and delivering needs something to be delivered out of.
- Idea that no fear means brave, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am sought and I am heard, because Psalm 34:6 has a man calling himself poor about the least dignified escape in the book.
- Father, You have never once measured me against anybody who felt nothing. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word puts the fears in the sentence and then takes me out of them rather than pretending they were not there.
Psalm 34:4
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