I have been contemplating the meaning of a particular psalm in the last couple of days. The truth is, I have known this Psalm…131, word for word, since 1984. It is the psalm every student must learn, upon entering The Holy Woods – the name by which past and present students affectionately and reverently, refer to the United Theological College of the West Indies [UTC].

Having entered the UTC, new students are made aware [by their seniors] of the mandatory requirement of learning the holy psalm…as it is called…ofbeing able to recite it verbatim from memory, in the words of the Authorized, [King James] translation of the Bible. Within his or her first couple of days but most definitely by the end of the first week, a new student, when called upon by a senior, must be able to recite all three verses of the psalm…without a hitch. To do so [declare the seniors] is to demonstrate a willing and teachable spirit…an attitude of littleness; it is to show that one is capable of receiving instruction…of following without rancor or argument, those who are set over them; it is to embrace a way of being in body, mind and spirit, that acknowledges the singular imperative, germane to a life transformed by and in Jesus Christ, which is…humility.

As I flip backwards, through the pages of my life, settling on those that tell the story of my first weeks in The Holy Woods, I recall and therefore admit that I was one of those rather defiant, argumentative new students, who found and thereby vocalized, every imaginable reason why engaging such foolishness [as I deemed the requirement] would not be tolerated by me…until by interventions that I can now identify as being of divine origin, mediated via human agents, helped me understand and subsequently accept the process of learning the holy psalm as a necessary experience that transcended mere recitation of its verses. I now realize that learning the psalm was then as it is now, a call/challenge, to perceive beyond its words, a life principle without which it is impossible to live the Christ-life. Encountering the psalm again during devotion in these days therefore, not only took me back to the time I was forced to learn it; being caught up in that reverie was the portal, beyond which opened up a larger meditative room, in which I was led to contemplate the psalm’s significance to my life now…today!

Read the psalm in your Bible or the For Your Reflection section of this blog and experience the metaphoric nature of its words…calling/transporting you to a place of unadorned honesty. You see, having read it again [and again], I had to ask myself whether or not I have truly internalized the humility it enjoins. When I quietly, secretly revel in the adulation of adoring fans; when in conversation with another I impatiently interrupt the flow of their thoughts and words, believing my own understanding and reasoning to be more profound and as such, ought not to be delayed in spilling forth; or when I flat out refuse to engage another, because for some strange reason, I deem them unworthy of my time, as a sweetly saved and sanctified child of God. Lord, I am the embodiment of a proud humility that has no place…not even an obscure corner, in the Kingdom of God, who in Jesus Christ, emptied himself, and became nothing, so that I could be something!

Wow…it almost felt like a sermon was coming on in the preceding paragraph, a sermon directed at me [or maybe you], a message in which God is saying very simply, ‘only when you know whose you are, can you truly know who you are’…a sinner saved by grace and consequently, having nothing about or in which to boast, save the gracious goodness and mercy of God.

The holy psalm’s reference to the soul being like that of a weaned child therefore, speaks volumes, in this differently difficult season of [my] life. Its challenge, delicately and with precision, hones in on the ability…the absolute need, amidst all to which one has grown accustomed, all that one has supposedly achieved and come to rely on as both backdrop and props, in the one person performance of life’s drama…to recognize with the writer of Ecclesiastes that these too, constitute vanity; in other words, the pride in our humility, gives the lie to the glib profession of being like and/or in Christ.

So, what is one to do? Here is what my meditation on the holy psalm revealed…this time around. Bearing in mind [according to spirituality guru Richard Rohr] that “change happens but transformation is always a process of letting go,” I must ask and so be open to Holy Spirit, day by day and every passing moment, to be reminded of my need for and utter dependence upon Grace…not me, but rather, that mediated by the Almighty, that I may so lean upon and into Him alone, no external accolade or failure, no good time or bad…nothing, will distract me from living, as a weaned child, upon the bosom of my God. 

Until next week, stay safe as you remain in His grip.

Grace+