Psalm 131

Consider these three profoundly simple verses of Psalm 131

“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.”
Psalm 131:1 

1) What David chooses NOT to do.

Christianity is full of those Gordian knots which the egotism of youth convinces us we will be the first to untangle.  Spurgeon mentions the difficulties of harmonizing free-will and predestination as being a good example of this.

I sat recently with a young man enraptured with the rapture.  He spoke passionately about the signs of the times, how the 4th seal has, apparently, already been opened and the imminent return of Jesus.

I remember being equally impassioned. . . 50 years ago!!!  I had the dates calculated, the weapons burning for 7 years because of onboard nuclear power, and why Gog and Magog would turn from the North to attack Israel.

When he asked me how excited I was for the return of Jesus to take place at any moment, I insured there would not be a return engagement by saying, “I really don’t care when Jesus returns.  I am ready for Him to return immediately, but want to have oil enough in my lamp to last me in case He doesn’t return in my lifetime.  I have been through at least 3 major expectations of His imminent return, and He has let folks down in those three, and countless others in the past.  Frankly, I have enough issues in my life right now I just want to be able to serve Jesus today and still love Him tomorrow morning.”

There is something about youth, which all of us have experienced, which convinces us of our greater passion, knowledge and commitment to the Kingdom than any previous generation.  Youth tempts us to look at those who have gone before and wonder how they were able to safely cross the theological street without our highly informed assistance.

The comical reality is that each of those previous generations have, in their own youth, had the same inflated opinions of themselves as the current generation of youth.

But David has, through the benefit of age, learned an extremely valuable skill: how to differentiate between those things he is able to decipher, and those things beyond his abilities.

Mark Twain said, "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."  How sadly true!

When I was enthralled with my first “Jesus is returning at any moment!!!” phase, I asked one of my preacher grand-dads when he thought Jesus would return.  His answer was a total disappointment at the time, but some of the deepest waters I can wade through today.  He said, “The longer I have preached the better I have wanted to convey the truth and simplicity of, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’”

Jesus will return and I cannot possibly understand all the moving parts involved in His return.  But can I, please, more faithfully and effectively live the profound simplicity of, “Jesus loves me, this I know”?

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
Psalm 131:2

2) What David chooses TO do.

One of the sad realities of having a house full of children is that neither mother, nor children, ever feel they have had enough “lap time.”  I do, however, remember one time when I crawled up in my mother’s lap and just sat with her.  It was after the “tragic tricycle debacle of ‘63," when I ended up with both knees and both feet severely scraped.

Mother had cleaned and bandaged the wounds, but later that evening sought to sooth the bruised heart of a small boy, and she pulled me into her lap.

My grandpa Hill told the story of the day he was weaned.  He remembered it well because he was 5 years old (it was the, extremely, “old south”).  His mother had some friends over for a visit and grandpa leaned around the door post and, with curling fore-finger, invited his mother to “come hither.”

It was not uncommon (and in some cultures is still not uncommon) for children to not be weaned until they were anywhere from 3-5 years old.

It does not take very many children for a mother to have some rather comical stories about nursing babies letting their needs be known!

But what about a weaned child?  In Psalm 131:2 David likens himself, not to a nursing child, but, instead, to a weaned child.  A weaned child who, as he says, has calmed and quieted his own soul.  A child with enough self-possession to no longer be completely driven by immediacy of need, but to understand the value and depth of presence.

Like a child who wants, literally, nothing out of his mother except the solace of her embrace, David has learned the blessing of seeking God for the sheer joy of experiencing God, rather than what he can weasel from God’s hand.

There are few joys as deep for a parent (or grandparent) as having a child so at peace that they fall asleep nestled in their arms.  The trust, the calmness, the quietude necessary to fall asleep like that is an extremely valued gift.

David sought that from God.  David sought God’s presence, not for need or demand, but for relationship and peace.

Oh for the maturity of a weaned child who seeks God, not for the blessing of His presents, but for the even greater blessings of His presence.

”O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.”
Psalm 131:3

3) What David encourages others to do.

From the security of the Father’s embrace, David invites all his readers to experience the same.  And isn’t that what evangelism is all about?

We are not called to theorize about what we have not lived.

When the right-minded maniac of Gadara begged Jesus to allow him to become a disciple, the response of Jesus would never fly at a modern Church Growth Conference.  The modern enrollee would be directed to breakout sessions where they would be taught how to identify the delivered, enroll them in the local church and train them in tithing and telling!

Not so with Jesus.

Jesus looked at that former nudist “cutter” and said, “No, I don’t think that would be to your greatest advantage.  Here is what I want you to do: I want you to just go back home, go back to the ones who kicked you out, who chained you to gravestones, before whom you embarrassed yourself and do this one, simple thing: ‘declare how much God has done for you’ (Luke 8:39).”

Just tell people what Jesus has done for you!  It really is that simple!  No one can argue with your experience.  “All of you know how crazy I used to be.  But the sane, productive, changed life you see in front of you is because I met a guy named Jesus!!”  And the next time Jesus went to the region East of the Sea of Galilee, He was met with a throng of people seeking healing and deliverance.  That man had done his job.

And here, in Psalm 131:3, David is doing the same thing with those around him, as well as with us nearly 3000 years later.

From a position of calm, and quiet, and rest, and peace, David is inviting us to experience the same peace of God’s presence that he had come to experience.

This is how we do it: “O Israel, hope in the Lord.”

And this is for how long we should do it: “from this time forth and forevermore.”