Psalm 131: The Christian Blogger’s Prayer

Andrea Mategna’s Madonna with Sleeping Child (1465-70)

Life in the Christian blogosphere can be frantic. It’s often a reactive place (guilty your Honour), and if you are going to blog over a series of years or even decades (shout-out to the venerable Tim Challies  in Canada, and my fellow West Australian Andrew Hamilton), it is easy to let the churn of life run away with you.

It’s also easy as a blogger – any blogger not just Christian – to reach above their station and speak about matters with which they have little knowledge. And then, when corrected on something, to double down.

It’s very hard even as a Christian to admit that one has gotten something wrong online. Part of that is to do with the fear of the swarm that comes after you and attempts to silence you. But some of that is just plain old pride.

So if there were any piece of Scripture that I would offer to bloggers – including THIS blogger – it would be Psalm 131,  a Psalm of Ascents by David.

The Psalms of Ascents were the songs sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the three festivals commanded by God of his people in the Old Testament: The feast of Tabernacles (booths), the feast of Passover, and the feast of Pentecost (fifty days after Passover, being seven weeks plus one day).

As they journeyed with their families, the faithful would recite these Psalms on the way to Jerusalem.  Just last week at the Lachlan Macquarie Institute outside Canberra, the institute’s director, Dan Anderson, led the participants in morning devotionals based around four of these Psalms.

What was interesting about this was how quietening and reflective these sessions were, especially in light of busy days with lots of talks and interactions.

I am an activist from way back, but I have to say, just stopping off and reading and praying through four Psalms of Ascents (126-129) certainly made me pause and consider my – and our – relationship to our God as pilgrims on a journey to the heavenly city.

And then – in the midst of the chaos of today as I live in one house on the east coast of Australia, my family in another house on the west coast of Australia preparing to fly here to me,- as well as our furniture somewhere in between -, I read these words:

Psalm 131 should be the Christian blogger’s prayer.

These words set us back on our heels.  They remind us that we can reach above our station. They remind us that the stance before the LORD that he most wants to see is a gentle and quiet spirit. They remind us that the LORD gives grace to the humble but opposes the proud.

And we so often sail very close to proud, especially those of us who deal with public matters in public ways.

What do you mean you don’t concern yourself with great matters or things to wonderful for you? Don’t you know we’re supposed to be helping usher in a kingdom?

What do you mean you have calmed and quieted yourself? Don’t you know we’re supposed to be attempting great things for God?

What do you mean you are content like a weaned child? Aren’t we supposed to have a holy agitation, given how much injustice and heresy there is in the world?

And yet, and yet, we are reminded of the scene, and the words of the Lord Jesus – the true pilgrim who made his way to Jerusalem, all the while putting his hope in the LORD in Mark 10:

 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”  And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16)

The true mark of us hoping in the LORD is not our activism, but an attitude of calm, quiet humility in which we do not reach above our station, and we do not agitate for its own sake.

It’s hard to even want to see ourselves as a weaned child when so much of our time is spent showing how adult and mature we are as we engage with the topics of the day.

So in our blogging, social media interactions and whatever we say in the public square, let’s set our hearts on emulating the pilgrims of Psalm 131.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have something to say, but it does mean that the way we say it, and our response to those who push back against what we say, just might change.

And as the backdrop to this blog post, both Tim Challies and Andrew Hamilton have lost a beloved son to tragedy in recent times. Their blogging about these events have displayed every bit of Psalm 131 that I would wish to display in the same terrible circumstances.

Both men show that they have put their hope in the LORD. Both men long for the day when they arrive in the heavenly Jerusalem for the final and forever festival.

May it be so for us all.