Psalm 3:1-4 (HCSB) (A psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom.)   O LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.”  But you are a shield around me, O LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.

Maybe it would be better to have all kinds of enemies surrounding me. My life is pretty sweet. The biggest problems I have tend to be the ones I cause myself.  If only there were someone else I could blame . . .

But, no, my failure to trust God’s love and provision can’t be credited to anyone but me. My own choices rise up against me and shout out, “Where is your God? Why hasn’t he helped?”

The really real answer – – – because I haven’t let Him.

Actually, this is not all that different than David in this psalm.  His enemies were those who aligned themselves with Absalom. And Absalom WAS David’s mistake. David filled his life with so many competing factions, so many people and desires drawing him in different directions, that his children were far down the list of his concerns. And his family paid the awful price of that neglect.

Are you familiar with the phrase, “one-trick pony”?  It describes a circus or sideshow act involving a young horse who can’t seem to learn more than the most basic of tricks.  He gets one trick down, and does it as well as it can be done.  But he doesn’t learn to do anything else.  He depends on this one trick to satisfy the people who care for him, to bring him his “daily bread”.  The one-trick pony is often looked down on, because of the simplicity of his desires and abilities.

But maybe that’s not so bad.  In the words of a once-popular song, “he makes me think about all of these extra moves I make, and of this herky-jerky motion, and the bag of tricks it takes to get me through my working day.”

O Great God, let me learn from that pony.  Let me learn from David’s mistakes. Let me learn the better way of single-minded pursuit of You.