He Is My CONTENTMENT

Stay in Your Lane

Here we are living through a global pandemic of coronavirus outbreak. Like most of you, my family has been sheltering in place as much as possible. I cannot remember a time when my kids were all home together like this for such an extended period of time. We all have to share the space. Here’s the thing; for the most part, sharing the home with everyone in my family works well when we all have our away-spaces too. But now we have to somehow cram all our living activities into the same spaces. It has been a challenge finding quiet corners for each of us to be doing our work. We are testing the limits of our Wi-Fi with four of us on video conference with different groups all at the same time. Inevitably, we will cross over into one another’s spaces from time-to-time. It might be nice if we all had our own lane on this highway, but there certainly times in my house right now when family traffic merges into one space and we somehow have to make room in the same lane for all of us to fit and keep moving.

In fact, that is a phrase some people use when another person crosses over and meddles into spaces where they are unwanted; we say, “get back in your own lane,” or, “stay in your lane.” It’s another way of letting someone else know when we think they might be overstepping their bounds and meddling into areas in which they are unwanted or unneeded.

Psalm 131 presents something of a “stay-in-your-lane” moment. This one is a pretty short passage; the entire Psalm is only three verses.

Psalm 131 NIV

A song of ascents. Of David. 1 My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. 3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.

You notice there is a section break. Verses one and two go together as a section, and verse three stands apart as its own section. In fact, verse three mirrors the previous Psalm which we looked at last time. Psalm 130 ends with an appeal for the people of Israel to put their hope in the LORD. And here we see that Psalm 131 ends with that exact same petition for the people of Israel to put their hope in the LORD.

Verse 1 - negative | I am not proud, not haughty, not concerned with great matters

Verse 2 - positive | I am calmed (stilled), quieted, content

Verse 3 - echo of previous psalm | Israel, put your hope in the LORD

Look also at how the first two verses show the perspective of the author through both a negative statement, and then also a positive statement. The Psalmist says, I am not proud, not haughty, not concerned with great matters. And then says, I am calmed (stilled), I am quieted, I am content.

Contentment

Contentment: state of satisfaction

our contentments are mostly momentary and circumstantial

Contentment is pretty hard to come by in today’s world. It is a state satisfaction—that’s how the dictionary defines contentment. I suppose we catch glimpses of that. When I sit down with family or friends to a wonderful meal in which there is plenty of great food, I eat my fill—okay, probably more than my fill—and I am satisfied; my appetite is satisfied. But follow this with me now; wait a few hours, and then what? I am hungry again. Doesn’t it seem like all of our satisfactions work that way? No matter what it is that may satisfy us and make us content almost always ends up being momentary, temporary, short-lived. So, yes, I might readily jump up and say I have contentment, I am a content and satisfied. But let’s be honest, what I really mean is that I have these brief moments of experiencing a temporary contentment that is so isolated and circumstantial.

Psalms point to a deep contentment rooted in the soul

not momentary, or circumstantial, or isolated

intentional posture, encompasses whole being

Psalm 131 is pointing to something more. The contentment expressed in this Psalm is a deep satisfaction that is rooted in the soul. It is not circumstantial. It is not a momentary reaction to whatever prevailing winds might happen to be pushing you forward or holding you back. No, this is an intentional posture of the soul which proactively pursues a discipline of contentment, a posture of contentment that encompasses the whole being, my whole life, my every circumstance. That sounds great. And that sounds like something very few of us know how to do well.

Staying in My Lane

contentment takes humility - acknowledge I have limitations

concern - Hebrew halak = walk around, about, among

do not walk about in places that are beyond your grasp, places which exceed your understanding

Psalm 131 is the confession of a humble person. It takes humility to admit there are limits to what I can and cannot do. But that is a feature of contentment we see in this Psalm, an accepting acknowledgment of limitation. The author writes, “I do not concern myself with great matters, or things too wonderful for me.” The word concern there is actually a Hebrew word that literally means walk around, or about, or among. It is a vivid picture. Do not walk about in places that are beyond your grasp, places which exceed your understanding. In other words, stay in your lane, bro. The writer of Psalm 131 is professing a contentment to stay in his or her own lane.

I am content to stay in my lane, as long as I get to choose what lane it is

It seems to me that many of us are happy to do that as long as the lanes we are in conform to our liking. But when the road takes a detour and the lane goes unpredictably out of the way we become much less contented with our place. And it seems like that’s where all of us are right now. Global pandemic has put the entire world on a detour for the time being. We have all been rerouted to a new lane to be in for the moment which none of us chose on our own. It’s fine to stay in my lane when I get to choose what the road ahead of me looks like. But it is an uprooted chaotic mess when life gets detoured to a lane I did not plan and did not choose and now we all have no choice except to stay in that lane.

what happens when my life is thrown into a detour?

You see, at this point many of us are beyond the occasional annoyance of having to fend off others from merging into our lane when they are unwanted. It’s past telling others to stay in their lane. Right now, doesn’t it also feel like most of us are just searching for what lane we are even supposed to be in in the first place? Our lives are rerouted and detoured and out of place and the whole idea of moving along in life in any lane at all right now is hard to figure out. It’s more like we are living in backcountry off-road 4X4 mode where there are no lanes at all. How can I be telling other people to get back in their lane when I am not even sure about what lane my life is in right now?

How are we supposed to be okay with that? How are we supposed to be content when normal life has been pushed off the map? What is God up to in all of this anyway?

I ask where God is? what God is up to?

I suppose because I am a pastor and people are looking for answers, I get asked where God is in all of this. I cannot speak for everyone, but one thing has become clear to me. It seems in my ordinary life before coronavirus lockdown, I had been—in one way or another—telling God to stay in his lane. And now that the ordinary patterns and routines of my life have been pushed to a detour, I have to confess I am beginning to realize all the ways I had been trying to push God into the lane I desire in order to keep my life in the lane I desire. This momentary disruption of stay-at-home quarantine is met with just a bit of indignation, that it was supposed to be God’s job to take care of things like this, that my life is not supposed to be disrupted like this. If God would just get back in his lane—you know, the lane where God does what I think God should do—then I can get back to my lane—you know, the lane where I get to live my life the way that I think I should.

I realize how much I have been trying to control my own lane

Global pandemic has provided me with a bit of a wake-up call. It is the realization that there are perhaps many times when I have—maybe unintentionally—assumed God would just stay where I want him to stay. And perhaps there are many times when I have assumed that God would just let my life stay where I want it to stay. And maybe it is going to take a rather dramatic disruption to point out just how easily discontented I have really been. It is a realization that I have a tendency to walk about in matters that are beyond my grasp.

I realize how much I have been trying to control God’s lane

Of course, God will not be confined by whatever agenda I may attempt to superimpose upon him. And maybe it took a disruption of my own plans and agendas for me to realize this. It’s time to stay in my lane. It’s time to stop concerning myself with matters that are beyond my control. It’s time to align myself to follow God instead of trying to align God to follow me.

I suppose the ironic piece of the larger biblical story here is that God did not, in fact, stay in his lane. Jesus very much went out of his way to come into our lane. Jesus merged into our world and traveled our roads and took upon himself the struggle of our journey. And yes, it is ironic that the Pharisees and Jewish religious officials of the time were essentially telling Jesus to get out of their lane and back in his own lane. But then again, as we’ve just pointed out, you and I are really not that different in telling God to do the exact same thing. In spite of all our own discontentment, Jesus stayed the course and saw the journey through all the way to the cross. Because let’s face it, that’s the lane you and I would have been in if Jesus had not stepped in and taken our place.

And so, maybe it is not so bad that I accept my limitations, that I let God be God and stay in whatever lane he chooses, that I be content with my place before God, a place where I can truly say, my soul is content because my hope is in the LORD. It is a hope that satisfies my soul today, and forevermore.