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A Prayer from the Ruins.

Q: Are Dragons in the Bible Actually Dinosaurs?

The Bible mentions sea monsters, Leviathan, and tannin (translated 'dragon' or 'sea creature') over 20 times. Whether these are dinosaurs, mythological symbols, or real creatures is debated.

Psalms 74 — When everything sacred burns and God seems silent

6 min read

Key Takeaways

Right in the middle of the darkest prayer in the book, the psalmist pivots from describing wreckage to listing what God's already done — not as a platitude, but as a lifeline.

The psalmist keeps saying 'your sanctuary, your name, your house' — pressing God with the question: don't you care that they destroyed what belongs to you?
Faith here doesn't look like victory. It looks like standing in the ruins with your hands out, refusing to leave until God moves.

📢 Chapter 74 — A Prayer from the Ruins 🔥

This was written from the worst place imaginable — standing in the wreckage of the , the one place on earth believed touched down. Everything sacred, destroyed. Everything holy, burned to ash. And the hardest part wasn't the destruction itself. It was the silence that followed.

Inside this Chapter

Hope Anger Doubt Faith Grief Prayer Suffering

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There's no neat ending here. No resolution. No "and then God answered." Just someone standing in the rubble, refusing to stop talking to a God who seems to have stopped listening. And somehow, that makes it one of the most important ever written.

The Question Nobody Wants to Ask 😔

The psalmist doesn't ease into this. No warm-up. No "Dear Lord, thank you for this day." He goes straight to the hardest question a believer can ask:

"God, why have you rejected us completely? Why is your anger burning against us — your own flock? The ones you chose?

Remember your people. The ones you claimed long ago. The ones you redeemed to be your own. Remember Mount Zion — the place where you lived among us.

Walk through these ruins yourself. Come see what the enemy has done. They've destroyed everything in your sanctuary."

There's something raw about asking God why — not in a philosophical way, but in a "I trusted you and now I'm standing in ashes" way. This isn't doubt dressed up as theology. This is a person who believed God was present in a specific place, and now that place is gone. If you've ever looked at the wreckage of something you were sure God was in the middle of — a relationship, a calling, a community — you know what this sounds like.

They Tore It All Down ⚒️

Now the psalmist walks through the details of what happened. And every line stings:

"Your enemies roared inside your meeting place. They set up their own flags where yours used to be. They came through swinging axes like they were clearing a forest. They smashed every carved surface with hatchets and hammers.

They set your sanctuary on fire. They tore down the place that carried your name and leveled it to the ground. They said to each other, 'We will crush them completely' — and they burned every place of worship in the entire land."

Notice how the psalmist keeps saying your. Your meeting place. Your . Your name. He's not just mourning a building — he's pressing God with a question: don't you care that they did this to your house? It's one thing to lose something that matters to you. It's another to watch someone destroy something that belongs to the person you thought was protecting it. That's a different kind of grief entirely.

The Silence ⏳

This might be the heaviest part of the . The destruction was devastating. But what came after was worse. The psalmist pours it out:

"We don't see any signs from you anymore. There are no prophets left. Not one of us knows how long this will last.

How long, God? How long will the enemy mock you? Will they insult your name forever?

Why are you holding back your hand? Take it out and finish this."

There's a kind of suffering that's worse than pain — it's the not knowing. No timeline. No prophetic voice saying "this ends soon." No sign that anyone is coming. Just silence. The psalmist isn't losing here. He's doing something much harder — he's holding on without any evidence that holding on is worth it. If you've ever prayed into what felt like an empty room, month after month, with no answer and no sense of when the answer might come — this is your psalm.

But You're Still the One Who… 🌊

And then — right here — something shifts. The psalmist stops describing the wreckage and starts remembering. And what he remembers changes the whole tone of the :

"But God — you have been my King since the beginning. You're the one who brings salvation across the whole earth.

You split the sea with your power. You crushed the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You broke Leviathan apart and gave him as food to the creatures of the wilderness.

You opened up springs and streams. You dried up rivers that had flowed forever. The day belongs to you. The night belongs to you. You set the sun and the stars in place. You drew every boundary on the earth. You made summer and winter."

This is the turn. Right in the middle of the darkest prayer in the book, the psalmist starts listing what he knows to be true about God. Not what he feels — what he knows. You're the one who split the sea. You're the one who defeated chaos itself. You're the one who built the framework of reality. Day, night, seasons, shorelines — all yours.

When everything around you says God is absent, sometimes the only thing left to do is go back to what you know he's already done. Not as a bumper sticker. As a lifeline. The psalmist isn't pretending things are fine. He's grabbing hold of the one thing the ruins can't take from him — his memory of who God is.

Don't Forget Us 🕊️

The ends where it started — with a plea. But now it's a plea backed by everything the psalmist just remembered about who he's talking to:

"Remember this, Lord — the enemy mocks you. Foolish people insult your name.

Don't hand your dove over to wild animals. Don't forget your suffering people forever.

Honor your covenant. The dark places of this land are filled with violence.

Don't let the crushed turn away in shame. Let the poor and needy praise your name.

Rise up, God. Defend your own cause. Remember how fools mock you all day long. Don't ignore the noise of your enemies — their uproar against you never stops."

There's no answer at the end of this psalm. No resolution. No voice from . It just ends — mid-plea, still asking. And that's what makes it so honest and so useful. Because most of the time, doesn't look like standing in the sunshine with your hands raised. It looks like standing in the ruins with your hands out, saying: I know who you are. I've seen what you've done. And I'm not leaving until you move.

That's not weak faith. That might be the strongest kind there is.