How Do You Calm Your Soul? (Psalm 129-131)
To calm our souls, we must recognize our natural standing with God. We are his children who are utterly dependent on him for sustenance and strength.
Psalm 129-131
Today's Scripture Passage
A Few Thoughts to Consider
What is the state of your soul today?
Do you feel restless, anxious, or fearful? If so, Psalm 130-131 offers some gentle words of encouragement. Five times, we see the verbs “expect” and “wait.”[1] Psalm 130:5-6 says, 5 “I wait for the Lord; I wait and put my hope in his word. 6 I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning—more than watchmen for the morning.”
As Craig Broyles writes, “The speaker’s lack of presumption is evident in the confession I wait for the LORD. It follows from the admission that forgiveness lies with Yahweh, that the appropriate human response is a deliberate posture of inaction. No attempt is made to procure divine forgiveness by human effort.”[2] He is simply going to sit still and wait. Psalm 131 adds these words,
1 Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too wondrous for me.
2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.
3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
both now and forever.
Leslie Allen writes that the psalmist’s “metaphor for such dependence, that of the parent carrying a child, is well attested in the OT to describe the supportive care that Yahweh had ever given the covenant people since the wilderness period.”[3] For example, Deuteronomy 1:31 says of this relationship, “And you saw in the wilderness how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son all along the way you traveled until you reached this place.”
