Psalm 131
O Lord, my heart is not proud
nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great
nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace.
A weaned child on its mother’s breast,
even so is my soul.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
both now and forever.
Reflection
I’ve often found myself drawn to this beautiful Psalm. When used in the opening devotions at the start of an Elders’ or Church Meeting, it tempers our world-changing ambitions with a dose of holy realism about the limits of our own capabilities. When prayed individually, it reminds me to beware my tendency to over-think. For this is a text that bids us bring our spirituality back to “first principles”: the quiet intimacy of trust in God.
Actually there are a few counter-intuitive aspects to what we read here. For starters, it strikes me that recently-weaned children aren’t especially renowned for being silent and peaceful… ever heard of the “terrible twos”? (Or is this just me over-thinking again?)
More significantly: we habitually sing of God “who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way” (Rejoice & Sing 72); for we’re more accustomed to thinking of growth and maturity (spiritual or otherwise) as a journey towards independence, towards a state where we’re ready to accomplish things for ourselves. Yet here we begin to discover that such notions of self-sufficiency are the very things we might need to be “weaned from” – and that spiritual maturity is found in returning to, wholly yielding ourselves to, the embrace of One who has brought us all to birth.
Indeed perhaps it’s helpful to think of spirituality in terms of “learning our place”: cultivating a sense of where we truly belong in the scheme of things – our life-circumstances, our daily activities, our relationship with God. And what better place to be, than safe in God’s arms?
So leave behind all that strutting after glory, and get ready to snuggle!
Prayer
Sovereign God,
you have set within us
a thirst to learn, a hunger to achieve.
Therefore our curious spirits
“shall not cease from exploration”.
Yet even so, wean us and hold us:
bring us to learn our place,
so that “the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.”
[incorporating lines from “Little Gidding”, the last of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”]