“I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content. (Psalm 131:2)
It’s difficult for some nursing infants to rest when they are being held by their mothers because they can smell milk and will start to fret when they get hungry. They may cry out and find it difficult to hear the mother’s words of reassurance. A weaned child is able to enjoy their mother’s presence and closeness from a position of contentment.
Some of us may sense that we are currently fretting in God’s presence. We may struggle to rest and be with Him because we have hungry souls. We may spend so much of our prayer times crying out and asking for our needs to be satisfied, that we run out of time to listen to His voice. Paul writes that God is the supplier of all of our needs in Philippians 4:19: “And my God will supply every need of yours according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” But our fretting and inability to rest may show there are some obstacles to us believing this. It could be that we look somewhere else for satisfaction.
True rest is possible when we know what we need and we seek God alone to satisfy us.
This week, spend some time reflecting on this prayer:
Father, I want to make sure I am always fully satisfied in you. Help me to learn about some of the symptoms I experience when I’m overworked or spent. Show me where to set the boundaries I need to draw near to you. I long to enjoy your presence in a state of contentment, rather than a state of desperation.
“No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits us.” Hannah Whitall Smith
