Psalms 131 – 133
Verses 131;1 & 2 are basically the whole Psalm but should be looked at together:
1 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 marvellous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quietened my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
This is almost counter intuitive to our faith. We get a giddy and excited sometimes we end up going off on some odd tangents. We all tend to do this in our faith journey and it’s justified by being “on fire”. This may be wonderful for the “churched” but is difficult for the “un-churched” really understand. Many just look at us a kooks laying on the ground babbling nonsense to an unseen God.
Also, we have to understand that as we grow with God that we must be weaned from Him. Our dependence on Him controlling everything needs to stop as we grow in Christ and we need to start helping others. I am not saying we lose our excitement for God, but we just need to take it to the next level and learn to share with others. Sometimes we just need to calm our souls and quiet our hearts, not only to sustain the passion but sometime we just need to wait. As you know being a child Christmas Eve, excitement causes time to stop, so keep the joy but calm the heart.
Verse 132:13 is the focus of this Psalm:
For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he has desired it for his dwelling place:
I read entries like this and understand the importance of Israel, but have a tough time imagining God locked to only Zion. My idea of God is not being encapsulated into one spot. That would be making God in our image! We must realize that God’s attention may be drawn to Zion, but he is everywhere still. A “dwelling place” implies that he “rests” there which confuses me in a way, since God is not bound to a body why would he need to “rest”.
At the same time it is clear God rested after the 6th day. So maybe He really needs a time to relax. Although, I can’t imagine that God needs to or does, I know “working” my brain every day makes me physically tired. So maybe God does rest in his “dwelling place”.
Verse 133:1 is a great observation I wish we could all follow:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity
This is something we all realize at one point or another in our lives. The problem is we seem to be hardwired for competition to survive. We need to win which is in conflict with this statement. So why does the Bible stress unity where we appear to be hardwired to live in conflict? First this “hardwired” state is more for survival than for winning in the board room. Although one could argue that is survival also! We apply competition for food to everything and that causes conflict. I think God’s intention is for mankind to not live as savages, but in unity. To fight that “hardwired” mode and help others while helping yourself.