Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-211 Sunday 27 Oct 2002

Reading: Psalm 131 – HUMILITY, THE KEY

‘My soul is restless until it finds its rest in you, O God’ (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430).

Pride and ambition (v 1) are values with dangerous potential to distort our affections, perceptions, and life-choices. David, a public man with popular support, could have succumbed to the adulation of his followers, and thereby failed to allow early simplicity and modesty to blossom into mature thought and action.

Christians in the public eye face the same danger today – we can easily be trapped into rationalising, or conversely, spiritualising our achievements. Platform power, performance related ministry and the admiration of others can readily seduce Christian leaders, almost without their noticing.

Of course, constant self-examination can be unhelpful as well. Yet perhaps at the end of a day when we have been tempted to make unfair comparison with others, to dwell too much on our own achievements, it may just be that God wants to put us up against the psalmist’s spiritual measuring scale, like the Pharisee in the Temple who thanked Cod that he was ‘different’ and ‘other’ from common mankind. (Luke 18:11)

Servanthood is easy to talk about, but how to live it out in the biblical spirit? (Phil 2:5; 1 Cor 2:1-5). A childlike spirit may be vital for us today (v 2) seen here in the moving picture of the weaned child no longer fretting ‘for what it used to find indispensable'(Kidner, Psalms 73-15O, TOTC; IVP). This may speak to us today of both our natural dependence on the God who holds us close, and of ‘moving on’ to what is more solid in our own faith (but always in a spirit of rest, not rush).

Prayer is ‘a wordless and secret conversation between the soul and God which no longer ends’. Why not try to practise the presence of God and ‘pray continually’ this week?

– David Blair

Copyright Scripture Union, 2002

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