Psalm 131: A Song of Ascents. Of David.
1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.
Lord, I do not understand this thing. I do not understand any of it. This virus, the mutation and the spread, how some people are barely affected while others are fighting for their lives. I do not understand the science behind the development of diagnostic testing, vaccinations, and anti-virals, or the process of clinical trials. (That there are people whose job it is to develop life-saving measures such as these is almost beyond my comprehension. To have that weighing on my shoulders, I think, is a thing I could not bear.) Lately, I don’t even understand the news. What I am to be afraid of and what need I not fear? The grocery store? My parents? The sidewalks in my neighborhood? My husband when he comes home from working at the hospital? What’s the worser scenario, a tanking economy or depleted health care systems? (I don’t envy the people whose job it is to grapple with that question.)
Lord I do not understand this thing, nor have You asked me to. What I do understand is Your immense love for me. As much as a person can understand the self-sacrificing love of the God of the universe for a poor wretch like myself. Ok, maybe I don’t understand Your love for me. But You have not asked me to understand that either, only to trust it. To trust that though there will be wars or famines or plagues, they will not prevent Your love from sustaining me through and rescuing me from this fallen world. Some day this world and all it’s catastrophes will be no more, and the thing that will remain is You, and the Home You have prepared, and by grace may I be there too.
And so, in the spirit of trust, and in the spirit of being lost in a sea of not-understanding, I will sit myself down on Your lap and lay my head and against Your heart and let You be in charge. I will not clamor or gripe or make demands, but simply be quiet, and rest, and trust.
