Scripture: Psalm 62:1-12
Journal: How can embracing your irrelevance help you to move from God and to
God alone? How can it free you up
and empower you to be all that God desires you to be? How is God asking you to trust in him today
instead of yourself?
Reflection: Okay, so I’m a bit of a slow
learner. I have been praying Psalm 62
every Wednesday for three years now and it is finally starting to get through
to me, especially when you add this odd season of being homebound due to the
coronavirus outbreak.
Here’s what I am
learning: I am irrelevant. And by that I do not mean that I am not
relevant and valuable to God; I mean I am not necessary for the survival of the
world. God can manage just fine without
me. If nothing else, the last few weeks of
being stuck at home has convinced me that I am not essential to the health and well-being
of those I know and love. Sure, I add
something unique and beautiful to their lives, but the truth is that when I’m
not around they seem to get along just fine.
And interestingly enough, that is not meant to be morbid or demeaning,
it is meant to be freeing and empowering—for both me and them.
You’d have thought I would
have learned this lesson by now, simply through praying Psalm 62. But again, I’m a bit of a slow learner. The very first words (in the original Hebrew)
of the psalm are “Only for God.”
It is the theme of the entire psalm—only for God, only in God, only
through God. There is no God and,
just God alone. And for someone
who tries to be relevant every day of his life, that is a bit of a blow to my
ego. I want to be relevant and
necessary. What’s more, I need to be
relevant and necessary. So for someone
who needs to be needed, it is a humbling reality. I guess God is trying to teach me the value
of being irrelevant. I guess he is
trying to get me to recognize and embrace that irrelevance, rather than deny
and resist it.
There’s an old saying that goes:
“If I need you, then I cannot truly love you.”
Until I can release my need to be relevant and impactful, life will
always be about me, not about God. And
God works in and through me best when it is all about him and is nothing about
me. So somehow, mysteriously, it is only
through embracing my irrelevance that I am actually able to be relevant to what
God wants to do in and through me in his kingdom. I suppose I would do well to remember than.
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Forgive me, O God, when I trust in myself
rather than trusting in you. When I do
that I only get in the way of what you desire to do in and around me. Amen.
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