"Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly;
Be to me a rock of stength,
A stronghold to save me.
For You are my rock and my fortress;"

Psalm 31:2-3a

I was reading Psalm 31 today and when it started talking about God being like a fortress and stronghold I immediately thought of one of my childhood interests:  He-Man and the Masters of the Universe!

In this planetery saga He-Man is the protagonist and Skeletor is the villain.  Castle Grayskull (seen above) is the name of the stronghold that He-Man is sworn to protect from Skeletor and other evil forces in the universe.  It’s a pretty awesome castle and as a pre-teen I really appreciated the foreboding draw-bridge entrance in the shape of (what else?) a skull.

I used to have this Castle Grayskull toy along with many of the He-Man action figures.  One of my favorite things to do was to have Skeletor take possession of the castle and then have He-Man reclaim it.  There was a pretty cool trapdoor in Castle Grayskull right next to the throne.  If you moved the throne the door would open and whomever was unfortunate enough to be standing on the door would find themselves plummeting into the dungeon.  This was usually the fate of Skeletor…hee-hee.

Living in an industrialized world I sometimes find it hard to relate to some of the language/imagery used in the Old Testament. The psalms are often full of war/battle imagery (e.g. God as a mighty warrior destroying Israel’s enemies from his chariot…) that is far removed from our world of shopping malls and cross-town traffic.  But this new image of Castle Grayskull…now that has a connection point for me.

God is our Grayskull.  We can hide behind his walls.  He-man has come to defend the universe and reclaim what was lost; Death and Skeletor have been expelled, dropped from their rebellious state into the dungeon abyss.  While battles may continue to rage around us; while we may be called to fight; while we are still in the midst of the fray in a war that’s already won; we can have confidence in God–our Rock.

A mighty fortress is our God.