Can You Find Peace When God Doesn't Give You What You Want?

Psalm 131 is brief, beautiful description of how the author lives without anxiety or fear.
In the opening of the psalm, the writer explains that they are willingly giving up trying to control everything.  As the Message paraphrases it, “God I’m not trying to rule the roost.  I don’t want to be king of the mountain.  I haven’t meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans.”

This follower of God realizes they are not in charge of the world or how things work out.  As a result, they have chosen to live in peaceful trust.  In an interesting simile, the writer says, “Instead I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.  Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”  

Newborn babies cry and cry for their mother’s milk.  It’s difficult to comfort a baby without feeding it.  Every nursing mother knows the quick way to quiet a child is to breastfeed it, even if hunger is not the actual problem.   This can create a problem for other family members who try to pacify the baby without breastfeeding.  Sometimes a bottle will work, but sometimes only the mother’s presence and milk will console the child.  

So the baby learns to expect the feeding whenever it is in the mother’s arms.  It’s instant gratification.  But as the baby matures and the mother starts the weaning process, the child has to learn to be content without the milk, but still in the arms of the mother.  This is a hard transition.  It is often easier for the mother to just capitulate and feed the baby.  And it’s hard for the baby to find the comfort simply in the mother’s presence without the instant gratification of the feeding.  

But that’s exactly what this writer has finally achieved.  They no longer cry for the instant gratification.  Their soul is calm and quiet simply by trusting in the presence of God.

I think the instant gratification we experience in our early relationship with God may vary from person to person:  peace and satisfaction, happiness, relationships, security, freedom, answers to prayers, blessings of many sorts.  But what happens when those things disappear?  Can we learn to “calm and quiet” ourselves like the psalmist did, without the material blessing or the instant gratification?  Can our soul be at peace without those things?

The closing line of the psalm is short and to the point:  “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord – now and always.”  Our hope is in the Lord, not in the things he gives us, the blessings, the answers to our prayers.  It is in God alone.