Looking forward (Psalm 37)

Some missionary friends who had applied for permanent residency in the country they were serving in, found themselves expelled instead with a month’s notice to clear out. The experience was traumatic. They started there as a young married couple, their children were born and attended the local school there becoming more fluent in the local language than their native tongue. Their friends, their life, their roots were there. Now they were heading ‘home’ to the place that hasn’t been home for years and which their children have only visited on holiday. Even years after that heart-breaking move, they wrote in their newsletter, ‘our feet are firmly planted in this place we live, but our hearts are in the country we used to serve’. Their sign-off at the end of every email was from Psalm 37: ‘cultivating faithfulness’ (v. 3, NASB)

Their attitude sums up well the message of Psalm 37, an instructional psalm that spells out the challenges of living a godly life among people who are antagonistic to God’s ways while they nevertheless seem to prosper. The psalm is repetitive and circles around the same topic from different angles, but three things stand out. First, there is the recurrent injunction not to fret (lit. not to let oneself burn with anger) when faced with the prosperity of those who do not seek God but to let go of anger (Ps 37:1, 7, 8). This is because God’s perspective on the matter is different and the overwhelming characteristic of the ungodly is their lack of substance. They will wither like grass (Ps 37:1) and vanish like smoke (Ps 37:20). Moreover, if we nurture such frustration, it will lead to evildoing (Ps 37:8) either because we try to harm or undermine those whom we envy or because by envying others we unconsciously affirm that what matters is what they have achieved (whether material wealth, career advancement, social standing or the like).

Secondly, the psalm encourages us to trust, wait and rest in the Lord (Ps 37:3, 5, 7). This attitude affirms that God’s perspective is right, that those who seek Him will be both looked after (e.g., Ps 37:23-26) and ultimately rewarded (e.g., Ps 37:29, 34). Finally, the psalm calls us to ‘do good’ (Ps 37:3, 27) or, to use the initial phrase I started with, to ‘cultivate faithfulness’ (Ps 37:3). Some translations render this as ‘enjoy safe pasture’ (NIV) or ‘enjoy security’ (NRSV) or similar. However, the Hebrew literally reads ‘feed/tend to/shepherd faithfulness’ and it evokes the action of the godly in feeding, guarding and nurturing their faithfulness, the way a shepherd looks after his flock. Faithfulness is not a character trait that arises out of nowhere but one that grows through repeated acts of being faithful. As we face the new year, whether God has planted our feet in a ‘happy place’ or in one that our hearts long to escape, let us commit ourselves to cultivating trust and faithfulness in the Lord.