PSALM 131
“My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother;
Like a weaned child I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.”
The word “providence” refers to God’s control over all the details of your life. God has good, wise, purposeful, and praiseworthy purposes for everything He brings or allows into your life. The word “providence” is shorthand for this reality.
Psalm 131 reveals the inner life of a man who has learned to trust God’s providence in his life. He has learned to be content with God’s governance over his life. He describes his contentment in the metaphor of a “weaned” or freshly nursed child. Although he was once restless, anxious, irritated, frustrated, demanding, unsure, and worried on the inside, he is now at rest and full of peace. All his unruly desires and fears that once raged as a tempestuous sea inside of him have been stilled. There is rest in his soul. He is now as peaceful as a mountain lake on the inside.
What happened? What created the change? He learned how to calm and quiet his soul by learning how to accept and trust God’s providence in his life. The beginning and ending of this Psalm support this answer.
In the opening verse, the psalmist describes how he has dealt with the pride that made it so hard for him to accept and trust God’s handling of his life. He says his heart is no longer proud, his eyes are no longer haughty, and he no longer concerns himself with great matters or things too wonderful for him. When taken together, these statements show how this man has learned to accept, trust, and submit to God’s providence in his life. He is explaining how he is no longer elevating himself above God and challenging the way he runs the world in general and his life in particular. He is no longer questioning and protesting as though God were answerable to him. He is no longer demanding that God explain himself to him. He is no longer withholding trust until God justifies his decisions regarding the things he has brought into his life. He is no longer relying on his own understanding and insisting that his will be done. He has humbled himself under God’s mighty hand. And that is how he calmed and quieted his soul. Humble surrender brought peace.
In the final verse, the psalmist exhorts the people of God to put their hope exclusively in the Lord. That’s another way of describing the transformation that led the psalmist to such a deep and abiding soul rest. He learned to stop trusting in himself and put all of his trust in the Lord. In humility, he recognized that only the Lord was worthy of trust. Wisdom and power belonged to the Lord alone. He accepted the fact that he was deeply loved by the Lord and his purposes were only good and would prove praiseworthy in the passage of time.
Humble trust is the way to deep and lasting peace. God is fully qualified to run the world and all the details of our lives. He has revealed his heart toward us by sending his son to die for our sins to secure our forgiveness and rise from the dead to secure our everlasting life. Clearly, he wants nothing but our good.
Romans 8:32 reads “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” The point of this verse is to show the absurdity of questioning God’s heart toward us. If he did the greatest and hardest thing to secure our greatest good, how could we ever imagine him doing something afterwards to destroy our greatest good?! He will never do such a thing. Which means he will never govern the details of our lives in a way that brings us harm. All his works will bless us in the end.
Put your hope fully in the Lord. Trust him. Wait for him. He loves us. His purposes are good. Let him decide how our story unfolds. He has tipped his hand with all the promises he has made and the sending of his Son. He has given us his Spirit as his way of being forever present with us. He will sustain us in every circumstance and will work everything together for our everlasting good. Calm and quiet your heart with this. Rest in this. Find true and lasting contentment in this.