David braids three descriptions of God into the opening line: 1"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" and "the stronghold of my life." These were never abstract comforts to a man who had lived through war. Light, salvation, and stronghold describe the difference between an enemy who can find you in the dark and one who cannot. The small word he keeps repeating matters: my light, my salvation, my life. A doctrine held at a distance will not do. David claims a Savior personally, in the middle of danger: even against an army, my heart shall not fear.
Then, in the middle of the military language, the psalm turns to what looks like a change of subject and is its true center. David asks for one thing, and the one thing is presence, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to delight in God himself. Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the good portion (Luke 10:42), the one thing worth the trouble, and Psalm 27 asks every reader the same question.
The confidence does not stay untroubled. 7"Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud!" He pleads in the present. God has said, "Seek my face," and David answers, 8"Your face, LORD, do I seek." God's command becomes David's echo. Then fear surfaces plainly: 9"Hide not your face from me." The face he seeks is the face he fears God might hide.
The most startling line arrives almost in passing. 10"My father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in." Nothing else in the psalm has the tenderness of that line, and it comes without preparation. Whatever crisis lies behind it, David reaches for the deepest human abandonment he can imagine, the two people who are supposed to want you before anyone else, and says even that would not leave him uncovered. The verb behind "take me in" is warm and literal, the language of gathering up a child, and it answers the fear of verse 9 directly. The face he was afraid God might hide turns out to be the face of a parent who picks him up.
The psalm ends where it began, in resolve without resolution. 13"I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD." No enemy has been named defeated. The confidence stands anyway, on who God has proved himself to be. The last line is a command to himself, repeated: 14"Wait for the LORD; be strong." Waiting is the shape confidence takes when the answer has not yet arrived. He says it twice, as though once could not carry it.
Ask what your one thing is. When David boiled a whole life of asking down to a single request, what came out was God's presence. Most of us have a longer list, and this psalm is a gentle invitation to shorten it.
Prayer
Father, you are our light and our salvation, and still we fear more than we should and wait less patiently than we ought. Teach us David's one thing, to want your presence more than we want our problems solved. When every human comfort fails, take us in as only you can. Give us strength to wait for you. In Jesus' name, amen.