Like a Weaned Child

Yesterday, through friends, the Lord reminded me of  this quiet childlike posture he began teaching me in 2007 according to my journal. They reminded me of Psalm 131, and so I went searching for it in my many journals.  I found that, back then,  I was recognizing the need for Sabbatical, but not realizing it as a lifestyle.  I have continued to wrestle instead of rest.  One friend graced me with Corrie ten Boom's words, "Jesus was Lord, is Lord and will be Lord.  Don't wrestle, just nestle."  As I considered the words of I John 4:10, "...not that we loved God, but that He loved us,"   I remembered these words from Jill Philip's song, "Gently lay your head upon my chest; I will comfort you like a mother while you rest."   For me, at least a couple trips around this "doing and overdoing" mountain are teaching me about a pride in my heart that still wants to arrange for love for myself in activity.  His rebuke yesterday was gentle and full of love that I long to repent of this pride and once again to understand this love better.  So I review these thoughts given to me a few years before with new anticipation.

This Psalm outlines the process of rest and trust.   The perfect picture of trust is a small child asleep against the chest of his/her mother, listening to her heartbeat.  When we are proud (wanting greatness and approval), when we are haughty (casting our eyes about judging, anticipating that next move of an enemy) and when we involve ourselves with great matters or things too difficult (trying to control the uncontrollable), these activities bring our soul off the lap of our Father.  As Wayne Jacobsen says in So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore, we become driven by “our anxiety that God is not working on our behalf.”  I want to learn a trust that leans on His chest.  As Jacobsen writes, "Trusting doesn’t make you a couch potato. As you follow him you’ll find yourself doing more than you’ve ever done, but it won’t be the frantic activity of a desperate person, it will be the simple obedience of a loved child."

Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty.

Nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me.

Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother,

My soul is like a weaned child within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord

From this time forth and forever.

In response to Psalm 131, I wrote these words four years ago.  Here I am in the fall.  The fall, gracious and silent, lies down with a throw and sighs contentedly.  This fall reminds me of my years living near the the stillness of the Ponderosa Pines in the Front Range of Colorado where the air was utterly still, cool and clean.  I felt that I was resting under the wing of the Holy Spirit, so it is with this Nebraska fall.   The air has the same golden cool, clean still quality; the angle of the sun produces a more orange sunlight to replace the bright white sunlight of summer.  This golden light reflected in warm orange, yellow and crimson colored leaves relaxes like a good yawn and stretch.  The whole earth is yawning and stretching, getting ready for its much deserved and long overdue winter rest.  And so the natural rhythm of life is that activity must necessarily give way to stillness, rest.   Natural rhythms seem to point to the rhythm of grace – ceasing all striving, all the work and receiving the God-given gift of being relaxed in his love, accepted, as the Psalmist says like a “weaned child on his mother’s breast."  Living there, living in grace is perfect contentment.  So I join contentment on my deck though an anxious child wanting so badly to do it herself, to impress her daddy, and to secure her own future whines noisily. I take that child in my arms and rock her slowly.  “Listen to the quiet and settle down for a nap,” I tell her,  "Daddy has done everything; there is nothing left to do."

I am grateful for the gentle cycles of the seasons.   I am grateful for His gentleness in the cycles of my own sins and shortcomings.   I can learn to trust and lean on and love a daddy who is so steady and sure in His pursuit of me.  I can love a daddy who will patiently teach me the same lessons over and over again.  I am so glad he has disappointed every illusion I've had about myself, that he has thwarted every attempt to gain confidence in the approval and attention of others, and that He has left me no place to go but home.  At home I find Him waiting in his large, stuffed chair waiting to hold me again.  I can really live here.