1
Life is Like a Country Song (Psalm)
Psalm 142
The Rev. Dr. Rob Joy
Grace Church
Columbiana, Ohio
July 31, 2016
Sometimes life is like a country song isn’t it? Or does country music reflect
real life, the ups and downs, the breakups and the get togethers? Where I grew up
in northwest Pennsylvania, there were only two kinds of music. You guessed it.
Country and western. The instant I woke up I heard the strains of the Corry radio
station, WWCB (or whatever it was back then) belting out Johnny Cash, Charlie
Pride, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynne, Dolly Parton, the ballads of Marty
Robbins, and Kenny Rogers after he got his act together and turned country. So I
Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool (Barbara Mandrell).
The whole culture up there had Gone Country (Alan Jackson) to sooth all the
“Achey-Breaky Hearts” (Billy Ray Cyrus) who lived there. When I was really
young I would go stay at gramma’s sometimes for a weekend. (Now I know why
you send the kids to gramma’s for a weekend.) She was Workin’ 9 to 5 (Dolly
Parton) and a lot longer making her Taste Freeze decently profitable. While at her
house, country was always on. Two songs seemed to be always on the LP record
player The Tennessee Waltz by Patti Page, and Release Me (And Let Me Love
Again) by Eddy Arnold. When I was writing this sermon it finally occurred to me
why gram liked these songs. She lived those songs. She married Charles Joy, but
later released him and D I V O R C E d him (Tammy Wynette). Then lived with
yes, lived with Nelson Williams long enough I believe to be a common law wife,
then Nelson left her for someone he had been seeing on the side during his frequent
trips to Florida for fruit to sell. I did not like “Grandpa Nelson” after that.
Grandma cried and cried and stayed with us for months. Then she met a
roughneck oil driller named Ed Erskin. He was a loving guy, but tended to hit his
beer too hard. He finally gave up drinking entirely, much to his credit and was
active in the Methodist Church. He said one day to me, “Robbie, I prayed and God
made me give up drinkin’.” He said it was God but everybody knew it was
gramma. They had a long and loving relationship and were true soulmates to each
other. So grandma was always getting together and releasing and getting together
and releasing until she finally got it right with Grandpa Ed. Her heart was broken
when she had to put him in a nursing home because she couldn’t take care of him.
His heart was broken when she died before he did. After that in the nursing home
he would say, “I’m comin’ Maggie. I’m comin’.” Then after what seemed like an
eternity to him, he finally did. Sometimes life is like a country song.
2
I have met and talked with in real life, 3 country singers. I worked the stage at
the Warren County Fair and met Crystal Gayle, with dark hair down to “here.”
She sang Don’t It Turn My Brown Eyes Blue. Super nice person. Buck Owens and
his Buckaroos on the other hand, liked their beer too much. It wasn’t allowed on
the fair grounds over which there was a minor confrontation and the Buckaroos
almost got booted, but in the end, claimed to abstain.
The more modern country singer Josh Gracin, former Marine and runner up on
American Idol, had Nothin’ to Lose when he came to my church office in Wayne,
Michigan, wanting to marry his sweetheart Ann Marie, and I performed the
ceremony. At the end of his video Nothin’ to Lose is his bride Ann Marie. They
looked like Barbie and Ken. But this is country, so “boom” that’s over. They
divorced in 2013. Didn’t even bother to call me from their home in Nashville.
Things I have learned from country music:
 Don’t mess with women! Remember Jeannie C. Riley’s Harper Valley
PTA? Or Jo Dee Messina’s I Want a Man to Stand Beside Me, Not in Front
of or Behind Me? Or Martina McBride’s Independence Day? Or Garth
Brook’s Thunder Rolls? Or Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats where
she describes keying her cheating boyfriend’s fancy pickup, smashing out
the headlights and carving her name into his leather seats? I’m warning ya:
Don’t mess with women!! Just don’t do it.
 Life sometimes is going to be really, really hard. Tim McGraw’s Don’t
Take the Girl or Tom T. Hall’s The Year Clayton Delaney Died. But then
even death or dying can be a time of healthy introspection if you Live Like
You Were Dyin’ like Tim McGraw says, or If I Die Young by the Band
Perry.
 Family is everything. Remember Johnny Cash’s Daddy Sang Bass and
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? How about Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your
Man?
 There can be lots of heartbreaks and breakups. There are tooo many
songs to list for that one. But Tammy Wynette’s I Don’t Wanna Play
House, Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix and George Jones’ He
Stopped Loving Her Today sums it up.
 Yet, love is real and fun and worth it! Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love
You is a great way to go through life together. The Silver Fox, Charlie Rich,
liked to start the day right with Kiss An Angel Good Morning. And who can
forget the song used at every hippie/country wedding since it came out in
1974, a song that describes how love can totally fill up your senses “like a
night in a forest?” John Denver’s Annie’s Song. Every woman wants her
man feeling like that about her! Read the words.
3
 But all things considered, having lived in the hustle and bustle of New
York City, in crazy New Jersey, in the wide-open farmland prairie of central
Illinois, on the winter-blasted Lake Michigan coast of Wisconsin, in a bluecollar suburb of Detroit, and now here, I just have to say, literally, Thank
God I’m a Country Boy (John Denver) or maybe I Should’a Been a Cowboy
(Toby Keith). Either way I know money can’t buy me happiness, but it can
Buy Me a Boat. (Chris Janson).
Enough of the review of top country hits from 50 years ‘til now.
Life is like a country song or country psalm. Country songs seem to engage our
deepest feelings, both happy and sad, and the psalms do the same thing. You can
find one for whatever mood you are in. And if there is such a thing as a country
psalm, psalm 142 would be one. Along with Psalm 57, Psalm 142 is called a cave
psalm. Cave psalms are called that because they were written by David about the
time when he was hiding in a cave, hiding from King Saul and his “A Team” of
3000 soldiers who wanted to kill him.
David had already been anointed by the Prophet Samuel to be King of Israel,
but it was a split convention and although David had the support of many,
especially in the outlying areas, the “powers that be,” the “super delegates” as it
were, kept King Saul in power. This threat to Saul’s reign would have to be
eliminated. So David fled. He ran for his life. He made his way to the cave of
Adullam or Engedi, we don’t know which, and hid in the darkness in the deepest
recesses. He was completely alone there in the quiet darkness. Entombed as it
were, in his own fear. If you read the story from 1 Samuel 24, David was with his
men, too, as he hid out in the cave. But in his experience, he felt all alone, so we’ll
go with that. If you follow this, David is a type of Christ. I didn’t see any
commentators say this, but if you read it through it is almost as if it is after Good
Friday, and Jesus is in the tomb talking. All had abandoned him. A trap was set
for him. No one helps him. No one cares for him. It’s more depressing than a
hard-luck country song where your grandma runs off, your dog is hit by a train,
and your pickup won’t start. In fact it’s way worse than that.
David makes a heart-felt appeal to God. He wants to be heard. He pours out
his heart and complaint to God. It’s intense. Many folks have had that experience
of sending a prayer of desperation to God. You want to know that God heard it!
Not only is David’s body exhausted, his spirit is faint. That is, he was at the end of
his strength. There is nothing left. And there is no one left to help him, only God
alone. He cries to God. He casts all his hope on getting help from God. All
humans may fail, but God will not. You see this expressed in a number of hymns:
“Abided with me, fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens; Lord with me
abide! When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide
with me.” “Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil he will richly
4
repay; not a grief nor a loss, not a frown nor a cross, but is blessed if we trust and
obey.”
Emotionally, mentally, in every way, David has been brought “very low.” In
the country they’d say “lower than a snake’s belly.” In fact, he’s lower than that.
He’s in a cave! I don’t know how you get lower than that. He is so low, his only
hope is God.
He prays for deliverance from what he calls a “prison.” That deliverance will
be his cause for praise to God. God’s people will then surround him, he has faith.
And God will bless him in great ways.
There are times in life when it falls apart and it seems absolutely everyone has
turned their back on you. That is a lonely place to dwell for very long. It’s like
being in a cave: quiet, except for your own thoughts which won’t shut off. It’s
dark. It’s hard to see which way to go and know what you should do. It seems you
can do nothing and it’s “the end of all things” (Tolkien).
It is in times like that on the road of life when disaster has happened or is going
to, we should pray the equivalent of Jesus Take the Wheel (Carrie Underwood).
But here, all alone, in the darkness of the cave, where David turns to God, when
Jesus has been laid after his death, that is where things start turning around. When
you are at your lowest is when God can lift you the highest. You see, in the cave,
for God to help you, something needs to die. Of course, Jesus had laid down his
very life, and was trusting God would help him. For David, he will live and escape
Saul’s wrath, but what needs to die in David is the thought that he was selfsufficient. Up to that point he had been the superstar. He had killed the mighty
Goliath when Israel’s finest shook in fear. He had been a mighty warrior for Israel
and done many great deeds. The crowds adored him. They chanted as David
paraded, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands!” Yeah.
That’s going to sit well with the king. David was the superstar and he knew it. It
seemed he could do anything. What David needed to remember, ever since his
fight with Goliath, was that it was God that fought the battle for him, that without
God’s help in his life, he could do nothing, and now, without God’s help, he would
not even have his life. David’s pride in his own self-sufficiency needed to die. He
needed to, once again, count only upon God for his very survival.
When you are in the cave, in that low place, it is perhaps the place where God
can help you the most. In that place, you are most ready to receive and count upon
God’s help, more than in any other place.
David does escape Saul’s fury and eventually becomes the king of Israel. From
being a fugitive, hiding in a cave, to becoming king. That’s an amazing reversal of
fortune.
Jesus, it seemed, had lost it all. He was praised as he entered the city on a
donkey, welcomed as the soon-to-be king of Israel. He had done great things:
5
spoken transformative lessons to thousands, miraculously healed probably
thousands, changed water into wine, walked on water, stilled a storm at sea, raised
many from the dead. There seemed to be nothing beyond his abilities. But the
powers that be were threatened, caught him, killed him, and he ended up in a tomb,
a cave of sorts, alone in the darkness, having lost it all. But then Sunday morning
came, and the Jesus who had been killed, by man’s hand, by God’s hand, became
the Christ who conquered all, who lives to freely give this new life to all, who is
present through the Holy Spirit with all God’s people right now.
If you’re still in the cave, I want you to know this: Sunday morning is coming
for you. God has great things planned for you and God himself will make these
plans come into reality. God will help you accomplish great things, meaningful
things, things that make a difference and can change the world. But one thing you
must do, and it is essential: acknowledge God as your only hope for life. Do that
and you will live and leave your cave, and have an abundant life no one can take
away from you. You might still have Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks), but
God will still put ya Where the Green Grass Grows (Tim McGraw). Then you can
be The Happiest Girl (or boy) in the Whole USA (Donna Fargo). Amen.