Lord, Your name is the most wonderful name in all the earth! It brings You praise in heaven above. You have taught children and babies to sing praises to You because of Your enemies.
(vs. 1-2)
I held a baby girl last night. She is three months old, and she thinks the faces I make are funny. Her mother trusted her into my arms, and she is young enough that she was unafraid of me. After I fed her, she fell blissfully asleep, worried about nothing more significant than whether her belly was full and her diaper dry. My little bundle was just content to be held by someone with at least a faint idea of what she was doing. It made me think of Psalm 131, and now I steal my own thunder as eventually I will have to spend a week on this small psalm, dissecting it, but here it is in part:
Lord, my heart is not proud; I don't look down on others. I don't do great things, and I can't do miracles. But I am calm and quiet, like a baby with its mother. I am at peace, like a baby with its mother.
This is how I am supposed to live my life. At peace like a baby with its mother. I am, after all, a child of God. I have been born again, not with amniotic waters, but by the Spirit Who made a brand new woman out of me. I will never be as smart as my dad. I will never grow to be as tall as He is or as wise. I will always be childlike until the day I know as I am known. As such, I should simply rest in His arms and trust they are secure.
My youngest grandson had a difficult time controlling his emotions when he was in his two's. He just could not calm down. One day while I was riding in the car with him and my daughter, something really ticked him off. Strapped into his carseat, screaming his frustration to the air blowing into his open window, he barely heard the remonstration of his mother to "Calm down!" He tried. He sucked it up, but it was just so hard to gain control. Then he sobbed: "Hold you hand, Mommy! Hold you hand!" Mommy reached back behind her and offered her hand to her sobbing boy. As he gripped it he calmed himself. Just something about that touch. The strength of a mommy-hand offering assistance in a task he could not accomplish without it.
That is how we should be. When things are too much for us, we cry out: "Hold Your hand, Father! Hold Your hand." Remember those fingers that created the universe? Where then could He not take us when our fingers are intertwined with His? In his high priestly prayer before the crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples that we who know Him can ask the Father in Christ's name for anything because the Father Himself loves you. (John 16)
Trying to perceive spiritual things with your intellect is often frustrating. God says He is Spirit and those who worship Him will worship Him with their spirit. (John 4) Again, it is our heart, our core, that God is aching for. Jesus prayed in Matthew 11: "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the people who are wise and smart. But You have shown them to those who are like little children. Yes, Father, this is what you really wanted. What He really wants? Little children. Who adore their Father. Who trust him like a nursing baby trusts her mother. That doesn't mean we have to blow our brains out to be Christians because there is plenty for our understanding to seek in our quest for knowledge of God. But knowledge of God is not enough. Just knowing about Him does not change us. Becoming a little child....being born again into His family...that is where we get our spiritual DNA.
The true children of God are those who let God's Spirit lead them. The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out "Father!"
(Romans 8) Hold You hand!
(vs. 1-2)
I held a baby girl last night. She is three months old, and she thinks the faces I make are funny. Her mother trusted her into my arms, and she is young enough that she was unafraid of me. After I fed her, she fell blissfully asleep, worried about nothing more significant than whether her belly was full and her diaper dry. My little bundle was just content to be held by someone with at least a faint idea of what she was doing. It made me think of Psalm 131, and now I steal my own thunder as eventually I will have to spend a week on this small psalm, dissecting it, but here it is in part:
Lord, my heart is not proud; I don't look down on others. I don't do great things, and I can't do miracles. But I am calm and quiet, like a baby with its mother. I am at peace, like a baby with its mother.
This is how I am supposed to live my life. At peace like a baby with its mother. I am, after all, a child of God. I have been born again, not with amniotic waters, but by the Spirit Who made a brand new woman out of me. I will never be as smart as my dad. I will never grow to be as tall as He is or as wise. I will always be childlike until the day I know as I am known. As such, I should simply rest in His arms and trust they are secure.
My youngest grandson had a difficult time controlling his emotions when he was in his two's. He just could not calm down. One day while I was riding in the car with him and my daughter, something really ticked him off. Strapped into his carseat, screaming his frustration to the air blowing into his open window, he barely heard the remonstration of his mother to "Calm down!" He tried. He sucked it up, but it was just so hard to gain control. Then he sobbed: "Hold you hand, Mommy! Hold you hand!" Mommy reached back behind her and offered her hand to her sobbing boy. As he gripped it he calmed himself. Just something about that touch. The strength of a mommy-hand offering assistance in a task he could not accomplish without it.
That is how we should be. When things are too much for us, we cry out: "Hold Your hand, Father! Hold Your hand." Remember those fingers that created the universe? Where then could He not take us when our fingers are intertwined with His? In his high priestly prayer before the crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples that we who know Him can ask the Father in Christ's name for anything because the Father Himself loves you. (John 16)
Trying to perceive spiritual things with your intellect is often frustrating. God says He is Spirit and those who worship Him will worship Him with their spirit. (John 4) Again, it is our heart, our core, that God is aching for. Jesus prayed in Matthew 11: "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the people who are wise and smart. But You have shown them to those who are like little children. Yes, Father, this is what you really wanted. What He really wants? Little children. Who adore their Father. Who trust him like a nursing baby trusts her mother. That doesn't mean we have to blow our brains out to be Christians because there is plenty for our understanding to seek in our quest for knowledge of God. But knowledge of God is not enough. Just knowing about Him does not change us. Becoming a little child....being born again into His family...that is where we get our spiritual DNA.
The true children of God are those who let God's Spirit lead them. The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out "Father!"
(Romans 8) Hold You hand!
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