When Everything Starts Falling Apart (Part 1 of 5)

An ancient psalm about rebellion, despair, and faith may explain our moment in Alberta better than we think.

There is a strange feeling in Alberta right now, and even people who cannot quite put words to it sense that something is shifting beneath their feet. Public debates seem harsher than they once were. Trust in institutions has eroded. Each week brings another controversy, another argument, another reminder that the social and political ground beneath us may not be as solid as we once believed. Some describe the moment as polarization, others as decline, and many simply feel weary from the constant tension. The strange thing is that our culture has no shortage of explanations for the crisis around us, but it offers very little explanation for hope within it.

This experience is not unique to our time. Human societies have passed through similar moments before, and the Scriptures speak about them with remarkable clarity. One of the most striking examples comes from Psalm 3, a short prayer written during one of the darkest periods of King David’s life. The psalm tells us that it was composed “when he fled from Absalom his son.” That brief note reveals the depth of the crisis. Absalom was not merely a political rival or a distant enemy. He was David’s own son, and through careful plotting he had managed to turn much of the nation against his father. The rebellion grew quickly, the political atmosphere became dangerous, and David ultimately had to flee Jerusalem to preserve his life.

The picture is sobering. The king who had once ruled from the throne of Israel now finds himself walking away from the capital city with only a small group of loyal followers. The nation is divided. The future of the kingdom is uncertain. Everything that once appeared secure now seems to be collapsing. David does not hide from this reality. When he begins the psalm, he acknowledges the seriousness of the situation without attempting to soften it. “O Lord, how many are my foes,” he writes. “Many are rising against me.” These words do not come from a man who is pretending that everything is fine. They come from someone who sees the crisis clearly and feels its weight.

Yet the psalm soon reveals that the deepest attack against David is not merely political or military. The real assault is directed at his faith. As the rebellion grows, people begin to interpret David’s circumstances in a particular way. They look at the king fleeing Jerusalem, they observe the apparent success of Absalom’s revolt, and they draw a conclusion about God. David records the accusation in the second verse of the psalm: “Many are saying of my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’”

This sentence exposes the heart of the attack. David’s enemies are not simply attempting to defeat him. They want to use his suffering as evidence that his trust in God has failed. They believe that if the king truly belonged to the Lord, his life would not look like this. His present circumstances, they argue, prove that God has abandoned him. The accusation is as old as human history, and it still appears whenever people try to interpret suffering without reference to the larger purposes of God.

In fact, the same reasoning appears frequently in modern life. When hardship arrives, people often assume that faith must be mistaken. If God were truly good, they reason, life would be smoother and more predictable. If God were truly faithful, believers would not encounter such deep trials. The logic seems straightforward: the presence of trouble must mean the absence of God. This idea has become so common in contemporary culture that many people accept it without ever stopping to question the assumption behind it.

Psalm 3 challenges that assumption in a profound way. David does not deny the reality of his crisis. The enemies are real, the rebellion is dangerous, and his future appears uncertain. Yet the psalm refuses to accept the conclusion that God has abandoned him. Instead, David continues his prayer with a sentence that completely changes the direction of the psalm. After describing the accusations surrounding him, he turns his attention upward and writes, “But you, O Lord.”

These three words mark the turning point of the entire prayer. David has acknowledged the chaos around him, but he refuses to allow the chaos to dictate the final verdict about his life. His enemies may be numerous, and their accusations may sound convincing, but they do not have the authority to determine what is ultimately true. That authority belongs to God alone. David’s circumstances may appear bleak, yet his faith rests on a deeper foundation than the shifting opinions of the crowd.

The significance of this moment is easy to overlook, but it speaks directly to the anxieties of our own time. Our society often evaluates everything through the lens of immediate circumstances. If events seem to be moving in a positive direction, people feel confident and optimistic. When those same events take a darker turn, confidence quickly collapses. Stability is sought in political movements, economic growth, or cultural influence, and when those things falter many people feel as though the ground beneath them has disappeared.

Psalm 3 offers a different perspective. David’s hope does not depend on the stability of his political position or the loyalty of the crowd. Those things have already failed him. Instead, his confidence rests on the character of God. The psalm does not pretend that the crisis is small, but it insists that the crisis is not ultimate. There is a deeper reality that stands behind the shifting events of history, and that reality belongs to the Lord.

This insight begins to reshape the entire situation. If God remains faithful even in the middle of chaos, then the presence of hardship does not automatically signal abandonment. It may instead reveal something about where true security must be found. David’s prayer begins in a moment when everything appears to be falling apart, yet he refuses to interpret that moment through the despairing logic of his enemies.

The remainder of Psalm 3 develops that conviction in surprising ways. David describes God as his shield, his glory, and the one who lifts his head. He even speaks of lying down and sleeping in the midst of danger because he trusts that the Lord sustains him. These claims seem almost impossible when viewed from the outside, especially when the rebellion against him still rages. Yet they flow naturally from the turning point that began with those simple words: “But you, O Lord.”

Understanding why David could speak this way requires us to look more closely at what he believed about God and salvation. His confidence did not come from ignoring the crisis, nor from pretending that everything would resolve itself quickly. It came from the conviction that the Lord governs the fate of his people, even when events appear to move in the opposite direction.

That conviction is the key that unlocks the rest of the psalm. It also provides the bridge to the deeper hope that Christians believe is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. But before reaching that conclusion, Psalm 3 first invites us to wrestle with a more basic question. When life becomes unstable and circumstances appear to contradict our expectations, whose interpretation of reality will we trust? The voices of the crowd are often loud and persuasive, yet the psalm challenges us to consider whether those voices truly understand what is happening.

David’s enemies believed that his suffering proved God had abandoned him. David believed something very different. The remainder of the psalm explains why, and that explanation will take us deeper into the nature of the hope that sustained him in the middle of crisis.

Next week, Part 2: The Lie That God Has Abandoned You