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.
Psalm 131:1
David had so much going for him. He was the King of Israel when Israel was at its zenith. He was a brilliant general and a courageous warrior. He was a gifted musician and songwriter. He was enormously wealthy and powerful.
And yet David had a profound humility before God. He had a soul-deep sense of humility and childlike trust before the Lord.
Part of David’s humility, part of David’s childlike trust, was to admit: Lord, some things are beyond me, above me, too big for me, too hard for me. Lord, there is so much I do not understand and cannot understand. Lord, you are so big, so vast, so immense, how could I, a mere mortal, think that I could understand all that you do?
There is so much that we cannot fully understand about God: the Trinity, Jesus is fully God and fully man, the sovereignty of God and free will of man, the suffering of children and babies, holy wars in the Old Testament, the reality of hell. Perhaps even harder to understand is our own pain and suffering in an unfair world.
It is OK to ask God the hard questions, but we should not assume that we will get answers to all of our questions this side of heaven. Part of our faith journey is to trust God when we don’t have answers, when we lack understanding.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
(Proverbs 3:5)
David had enough humility to recognize that God was so vast that he could not possibly understand everything about him. David had enough humility to admit: God is God and I am not. David had enough humility to trust God in the face of life’s enigmas and pain.
What about you?
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.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
(Psalm 131:1-2)