Simple Trust

 

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

When are we most likely to be in trouble in our walk of faith?  Usually it is when we strike out on our own, confident that we know the way, the how, the why and we start running.    We are involved in great things and we pursue them with abandon.  We feel invincible and unstoppable, so who better to trust than ourselves.  This is what our world recognizes and cheers.  This is a place of pride and selfish ambition.

But this Psalm, Psalm 131, is about as far away from what the world values as any prayer could be.   When our confession is “Lord, my heart is not proud”, we are in the place to listen to God’s voice.  When we can “calm and quiet” our hearts from our own strivings, stop the running and wait upon God, we are in a place of expectancy.  When all of the “important” matters which we struggle with, to figure and sort and manipulate, fall away from our thoughts and in their place we seek God, we are in a place of peace.   

Truly, this is a place of simple trust in God, that His ways are better and wiser than ours and that there is hope in Him.    Accepting this has been for me like a cool drink of water on a long dusty hike.  My longings are satisfied more and more in God and not those things of the world that try to catch my eyes.  But my move in this direction was not easy.  It was accompanied by the many pains which accompany moving from trusting only yourself to trusting God. 

Truly this place is good.  Matter of fact it is better than anything else in the world.  It is like the young child resting in the loving care of a parent.   That is the way it should be between us and our Heavenly Father.  It takes trust to stay there.  It is a daily submission that is worked out in the midst of our daily struggles.  It is not some one time deal that once you attain some measure of trust, you can relax and say I have it made now.  It isn’t easy to cling to humility each and every day, but peace and joy and contentment start there.

Put your hope in the Lord, now and always.  This simple trust will do a great work in your life. 

Scott for Wellspring Copyright 2008

In a Dry and Weary Land

O God, Thou art my God;

I shall seek Thee earnestly;

My soul thirsts for Thee,

My flesh yearns for Thee,

In a dry and weary land where there is no water.  Ps. 63:1

There will be many times in our journey of faith that we will feel we are in a dry and weary land.  Nothing will satisfy, nothing will quench our thirst.   We will ache for something but will not be sure how we can find it or what it is we are really longing for.   Our God may seem far off and times of refreshment in the Lord will become a barely remembered memory. 

You are not alone in this.  David in the Psalms writes often of this dry and weary place.  It is a place of seeming abandonment and rejection.  Jesus even uttered words from the Psalms.  In Psalm 22, on the cross he felt the abandonment of the Father as he bore the wrath for our sin…”My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Carmelite monk, writes of the dark night of the soul, which is the soul’s journey from a state of abandonment and darkness to a loving union with God.  St. John writes that this aridity of sense comes as God takes them to a deeper and more intimate level of communion.  It is no longer a communion with God that is based on the pleasures received from prayer and meditation and various other exercises but a weaning from these things to a true union with God Himself.  This dark night is not only accompanied by a dryness with the spiritual things that previously brought happiness but also the fact that one finds no “attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever”. 

The effects of this dark night are painful.  St. John writes, “During the time, then, of the aridities of this night of sense…spiritual persons suffer great trials, by reason not so much of the aridities which they suffer, as of the fear which they have of being lost on the road, thinking that all spiritual blessing is over for them and that God has abandoned them since they find no help or pleasure in good things”.

Truly this ache, this hunger and thirst is for God and nothing of the world can satisfy this.  Only God.  Only seeing Him in His sanctuary is the heart’s true desire.

Thus I have beheld Thee in the sanctuary,

To see Thy power and Thy glory.  Ps. 63:2

St. John notes of Psalm 63 that, “It is a wondrous thing that David should say here that the means and the preparation for the knowledge of the glory of God were not the spiritual delights and the many pleasures which he had experienced, but the aridities and detachments of his sensual nature, which is here to be understood by the dry and desert land”.  David is drawn to see the power and glory of God through this dry and weary land where nothing but God really satisfies.

I have encountered these dark nights of sense and spirit.  I find in them that my only desire is to know God and to know my place with Him.  Through these times I can say God has been at work to renew and deepen my faith.  I am being weaned from spiritual experiences and sweetness more into submission and union with God.  I have many miles to go on this path and most likely many more dark nights, but I have found myself praying like David in verse 3:

Because Thy lovingkindness is better than life,

My lips will praise Thee.  Ps. 63:3

Take heart in these dry times and look for what God is doing…be still, wait, listen.  God has not abandoned you in the desert. He is taking you to new places on the journey and the desert is part of this wonderful road He has for you.

Scott for Wellspring Copyright © 2008