"Contentment"

Scripture Passage

Psalm 131; Psalm 133; Psalms 138-141; Psalm 143

Scripture Focus

LORD, my heart is not proud;
    my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
    or too awesome for me to grasp.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
    like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
    Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD—
    now and always.
                               (Psalm 131 NLT)

Observation

There are things I enjoy about each of the psalms in today’s reading, but the truth is, I laughed out loud for joy when I saw Psalm 131. It’s one of my favorites, and has been since reading Eugene Peterson’s classic book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction years ago. (Wish I could find my copy. Did I loan it to you?)

Psalm 131 is one of the “psalms of ascent”—a particular selection of songs of worship that would have been sung by God’s people as they made the journey towards Jerusalem for festival worship. And this one might express the greatest worship of all because it expresses satisfaction with God even when God hasn’t supplied answers to every question.

I think I’m a fairly inquisitive guy. I enjoy discussions of theology and philosophy. I love to learn—to discover something I didn’t know before or be challenged to think along lines I’d not considered before. But (more than some, I’m confident), I’m also pretty satisfied with what I don’t know—or, at least, satisfied with God in spite of what I don’t know.

I do believe, for all the value of inquisitive minds questioning anything and everything, that there are some things we’re not qualified to understand…some mysteries that are not ours to unravel. And so, even given what I don’t understand…“like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk”…I put my hope in the Lord—now and always.