How do you normally spend your Sundays? Are they a frenzy of activity, church services and entertaining people? Or are you able to take time to rest, recover and rejuvenate your faith in God?

David, who wrote this psalm, knows the importance of focusing on God alone. His humble posture and thoughts (v 1) reflect a man who knows the most important place for his focus (v 3). He was a busy man with lots of responsibilities, but he ‘calmed and quietened’ his soul, like a young child with their mother (v 2). 

In the last couple of days, we have looked at Moses and the midwives: people who, like David, needed to know God and experience him in the difficult situations they faced. Jesus, too, took time out to be with God (Mark 1:35). So should we! Let’s not allow misplaced pride in our own abilities to distract us from depending on God day by day. We need him more than anything else!

Let David’s words guide your prayer: ‘God, I’m not trying to rule the roost, I don’t want to be king of the mountain … I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.’¹

The superscription describes today’s psalm as ‘A song of ascents’. As Jewish pilgrims ascended the hilly path to Jerusalem for the annual feasts, they prepared their hearts for worship by singing these ‘songs of ascents’.² As the pilgrims climbed higher, this psalm of David would have reminded them that without humility they dare not approach a holy God. The closer we are to the Lord, the more keenly aware we become of our own flaws and failures. This is the poverty of spirit that Jesus declares ‘blessed’ in his Sermon on the Mount.³

As king, David was doubtless concerned with many weighty matters of state but, as a child of the King of kings, he declares himself untroubled by the scope and magnitude of matters that lie beyond his understanding or control (v 1b). He employs the metaphor of a little child – not a baby but a weaned child. The baby at the breast is preoccupied with its own needs, easily frustrated and fretful when these are not instantly satisfied. The weaned child, however, having discovered that mum can generally be relied on to provide meals on time, is more likely to be ‘content’ (v 2c). While still ‘with its mother’ (v 2b), clinging trustingly to her hand, he is less likely to be unreasonably clingy. 

David’s ‘I have calmed and quietened myself’ (v 2a) is echoed by Paul’s ‘I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances’.⁴ This is not an instinctive reaction but a learned response. It is an attitude we cultivate by deliberately and repeatedly choosing to focus on our heavenly Father rather than merely on our earthly circumstances. 

David encourages Israel to have the same trusting hope and confidence in God (v 3). What testimony will you share (and with whom) about lessons in trust and contentment?

¹ Ps 131:1,2 The Message  ² Ps 120–134  ³ Matt 5:3  ⁴ Phil 4:11, emphasis added