“Hasten, O God, to save me; come quickly, Lord, to help me. …come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; Lord, do not delay.” (Psalm 70:1,5)
A long time ago, as a young Christian, I was introduced to the idea of “arrow prayers”. Those are the short, sharp prayers fired off to heaven as a situation unfolds in front of me and I need to know the right word to say or the right thing to do. I’ve often used them. But Psalm 70 describes the kind of catastrophic and overwhelming moments of crisis that can befall us. Those moments have often felt beyond the scope of my brief arrow prayers. Imagine being caught in a sudden life-threatening, overwhelming, chaotic situation: a moment when there isn’t even time to formulate an arrow prayer and there can be no calm and measured response. All that can be done is a panicked cry of ‘Help!’ Yet that one-word cry is itself a prayer. We might describe Psalm 70 as the model for those situations that are beyond our arrow prayers: it offers a true “storm prayer”. Psalm 70 is an assurance that even a one-word panic prayer in a chaotic, sudden maelstrom will be heard. So, I keep my quiver stocked with arrow prayers, but I am reassured that my storm prayers will also work.