A Still Heart

DEVOTION

PSLAMS

A STILL HEART

Ps 131

131:1 A song of ascents. Of David.

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.

NIV

The twelfth song of ascent for the twelfth of fifteen steps up to the temple. What does it mean to have a proud heart, or haughty eyes? In the Hebrew both mean to exalt oneself. This is thinking we are special, we as humans have the ability to do whatever we want. There are all sorts of voices telling us that very thing, “Be all that you can be” “You can achieve whatever you set your mind to”.  Commercials, slogans and the educational system of this world all telling us that it is our making as to how great we will become. We have no limit to our achievements, our success, and our life. All those voices are based on making the heart proud, and the eyes haughty. A proud heart is also a harden heart, shutting out everything except self. This proud heart lifts itself up, exalts itself, thinking more of itself than it should. No, we are not to be concerned with those great matters of things which are too wonderful for us. We are to live with a still and quieted soul. Does that mean we do nothing? Not at all, but the whole of our life should be about the Lord and not about how great we can become, or how successful we can be, our how much we can achieve or how much wealth we have amassed for our benefit in the now and our later years. God has set a path before us, he is the master of our life, the rudder to our ship, it sets the course for us and we only need to follow him. Instead of living in the turmoil of storm of life, we live in the stilled and quieted soul owned and operated by the Lord. We are told over and over again throughout the scriptures to not be worried or anxious or afraid or to be concerned what we will eat, or about the clothes we will wear. Jesus tells us to put the Lord first and all those things the pagans chase after will be given to us. We would need to include most of Matthew chapter six to get the whole of Jesus’s teaching, but we know it, and we should live by it, for it is the truth of a really successful life, a life of true wealth and of being exalted. We do not exalt ourselves, but humble ourselves before the Lord and he lifts us up. He makes us into what he desires for our life. Some may have more intelligence than others, some may have more wealth or material goods than others, and some may have better positions in society, at least in accordance with the standards of this world. But there is no envy, jealously, or coveting in the kingdom living we are to be in. We are precisely where God intends us to be and doing exactly what his plan is for our life. We are the clay, he is the potter. He has made us the exact vessel he desires us to be for his glory, for his purpose. This is why we can have a quiet heart, a still soul, content in who we are and where we are and what we have. We have put our trust in him, not in ourselves, for if we trust self we will fail short of everything the Lord has for us. But because we trust in him we will be all that he intends us to be. Our hope is in him. All our hope is in him. We just keep walking the path he has set before us wherever he leads, we will follow that path. So we have a still heart.