God's answer to anxiety from Psalm 131

Simone Richardson on Psalm 131:

A little child rests against his mother and doesn’t bother himself with big and difficult things. He doesn’t worry about how the mortgage is to be repaid. He isn’t thinking about where the next meal’s coming from. He’s not worried about the war in the middle east - or even the war next door. He doesn’t have to. Mum’s got those things sorted. He’s with her and that’s enough. The weaned child knows his place in the world. Nestled in to mum! Mum will sort things out. ...

We can be like kids who grew up in neglectful or abusive homes, who weren’t looked after properly. Kids like that, even after they’re put in safe and caring homes, they still find trust really hard. They can know in their heads that they’ll be looked after, but underneath there’s still this instinct to depend only on themselves. So they’ll steal food from the pantry and hide it under their beds. Just in case.

For many of us here who are Christians, that’s what we can be like. We know in our heads that Jesus reliable. That we can trust him. And we’ve decided to. But our hearts haven’t caught up yet, so we don’t rest against him. We nurture our worries - like a kid stashes food under her bed - imagining that we can stay in control of things that way.

One great theologian said that Psalm 131 takes the shortest time to read but the longest time to learn ...

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