I Have Quieted My Soul

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Shortness of Psalm 131 and Its Place in the Psalter

I'm delighted always at the privilege of looking at God's Word with God's people, and I'd like to ask you to look with me at Psalm 131. Psalm 131. I heard a comment from a friend, it was probably six months ago, and it just stuck with me.

And he talked about as life progresses, and somebody continues to walk through the pathway of life, he just said, we accumulate scars and bumps and bruises and injuries. It's just the bumps and the bruises and the pain of life on a broken planet.

And the accumulation of that across decades, it weighs on you. And I think of passages like the comment in Job, man who is born to woman is born to trouble, like the sparks fly upward. I think of that every time I sit around a campfire, you just see the sparks go up.

And it's like, it's inevitable and invariable. It's always headed one direction, like the sparks are impelled in one direction. And I think, there's my life.

Fast, it's gone.

And yes, balancing this with Ecclesiastes, life is good, life is a gift, life is joy. And life is always also constantly fraught with struggle. That is life on this broken planet. I was preparing this message, and I was down in my basement office area.

So I sat down one morning, I think this was like maybe Wednesday. And I was thinking of an opening illustration that would kind of capture that notion of the struggle portion of life. So I sat down in my chair, I had my coffee.

I'm going to start out thinking through an illustration. Before I get going, I stretched out my hands like this. And something, I don't know what, but something about the way I stretched my hands, I felt this sharp pain, a muscle spasm in my back, right here.

Something pulled. And for the next three days, I was walking around a little bit, it's all good now. I thought, well, there goes my illustration. Just the little bumps, the bruises, the pains, the jabs.

The odd, weird, inexplicable back spasm type of pains. I think that's what this psalm is addressed to. And I would turn our hearts and eyes to it. I'm going to read the psalm. I'll read it in its entirety.

It won't take long. Psalm 131. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. I'm going to start out just by pulling together some strands of context for the psalm. And an initial bit of context is what I think is automatically striking as soon as you read the text.

This is one of the shortest chapters in the Bible. It's not the shortest. Psalm 117, Psalm 134 are just a little bit shorter. It's the third shortest chapter in the Bible. And I wonder as a starting observation, maybe even the brevity of the psalm is itself making a bit of a point to us.

It's a psalm that speaks with profundity to some of those deepest pangs and aches of the soul. As you walk through this pilgrimage called life. And addressing those deepest struggles. I mean it's possible and God does in places give us long stretches of literature.

Like a book of 42 chapters that's addressed to this question and this problem. Sometimes God speaks in verbose extended stretches. Literary flourishes. Sometimes He speaks in three short verses. He just quiets your soul.

And maybe even just the brevity of the psalm speaks to the profundity of the thought. Passing comment. As a possibility for your week this week ahead. You could memorize this psalm. I think that's some of the utility of it.

It's rich and profound. But you could in a day or two memorize it. And you carry this compact answer to some of those deep questions. You can carry it as a way of quieting the struggle in your soul. C .H. Spurgeon commented on this.

It's one of the shortest psalms to read. But one of the longest to learn. I think that's some of the richness of it. Maybe the brevity is part of the point. Second bit of context setting up. Just even before we turn to the psalm itself.

Is to notice where it falls in the Psalter. This is Psalm 131. And that means it's part of Book 5. For a long period of my Christian life, I just would read through the psalms. I'd come across Book 2, Book 3.

Okay.

And never really grasped that there is a progression. And the Book 1 through 5 framework is actually an important part of the way you read the psalms. It's a bit of a journey. And so I'm just going to talk kind of flyover style through the books.

And if you've encountered this, great. And if you've not, I mean maybe this shapes the way you think about the psalms. But as you start from the beginning, Psalm 1, Psalm 2. The foundational psalms that kind of cast the shadow across the rest of the psalter.

Book 1 is the foundation of blessing in God's kingdom. If you know God's kingdom and you know God's word. And you acknowledge the king, think Psalm 2. And you acknowledge his law, Psalm 1, you're blessed.

Blessed is the righteous man. And eventually that blessing will extend to the entire world, Book 2. Which is Psalms 42 to 72. So God offers blessing in his kingdom through his Messiah. But it's not just for Israel.

It's for the world. And so in those psalms, 42 to 72, you get lots of international flavor. You get the notion that the salvation will extend to the furthest reaches of the earth. I mean those themes are all over the psalter.

But especially in those psalms. It's glorious. It's hopeful. It gives life and it gives confidence. And then it turns to crisis, Book 3. Because in Psalms 73 to 89, you feel the bottom drop out underneath.

God's kingdom is glorious and it's great and it's going to be worldwide. Oh, but Israel is an exile. Israel has failed. Israel is a broken people. And so kind of the flavor now of by the rivers of Babylon we wept.

When will God deliver us? Has he forgotten us? Has he judged us? Have we sinned so disastrously that there is now nothing left? And the answer comes in Book 4, Psalms 90 to 106. A reaffirmation that God's kingdom program is going forward.

The people failed and the people destroyed so much. And yet God's goodness remains. And it endures forever. So that Book 5, Psalms 107 to 150, the last section, because of that we can worship and praise.

And if you just read that last section from 107 all the way to the end, you see praise and hallelujah and songs. And you get these back and forth kind of structures where the speaker is crying out praise and the audience answers back for his love endures forever.

Those kinds of patterns. And in some ways this psalm then might feel like it sort of fits in Book 3. Sorry, that doesn't mean anything. Tracking, well, the progression again. God's good kingdom, Book 1.

For the world, Book 2. But the bottom drops out Book 3.

What happened?

Is there hope? It kind of feels like that. Has God forgotten us? I suspect actually the psalm here though is in light of the entire journey. And it's kind of that the psalmist has walked from Book 1 all the way to Book 5.

God's kingdom is blessed. It's for the world. Oh, but sin has made such a mess of it all, and yet God's kingdom continues. Praise the Lord. And it's like he's walked through the entire journey, and it's from that standpoint, looking back across the entire journey,.

He speaks with hope.

And I think that will fit as we move forward into the psalm because you're going to see all of that. It's like a microcosm of this altar packed into this one psalm. From the promise of hope all the way to the disappointment to, yes, the restoration,.

God is still at work.

A third bit of context. This is one of the Psalms of Ascent. You can see it right at the top. A Song of Ascents of David. And the Song of Ascents is actually a little book within the book. This is Psalms 120 to 134, and they're labeled this way.

I mean, if you read this out, look at the psalms around it, you'll see a Song of Ascent, a Song of Ascents. They were traditionally sung as the people traveled up on their way to the feasts. They had a series of different feasts, primary among which would be the Passover feasts.

And so people are coming up to Jerusalem, literally coming up, because they're moving up in altitude towards the city. And so Song of Ascent, you're climbing as you work your way up the roads, up the hills.

But the notion of the ascent concept then is also, the framework would be like a pilgrim theology. It's a whole framework that there's a sense as you're traveling up the hill, right, and you're feeling the burn in your legs as you climb up.

You're feeling the altitude. You're realizing you're on an incline. It's evident as you're working. You feel the burn as you're going, and yet you have the sense of destination. I'm going somewhere. And my hopes and the future and my confidence is wrapped up in that place.

I'm going up to the temple. I'm going up to God's place. In the meantime, we aren't there yet. We want to be there. We feel the burn on the way, but we're still pilgrims traveling. And there is in that a mixture of lament and joyful hope as you read through these psalms, these Psalm of Ascent, 120 to 134.

I mean, there are times when you'll hear a cry like the psalm just before, out of the depths I cry to you. And there's also hope up there. I believe and I affirm up there. I'm on my way. It's a journey.

I'm a pilgrim. But up there, there is still hope. There is still confidence. And all of that joyful hope is wrapped around the confidence that God will eventually restore his people in their place through the Messiah.

And that's where we're headed.

A Psalm of Ascent. Language like Psalm 121, I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? Kind of a how long, O Lord? Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come, feel. Psalm 122, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Psalm 126, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. You hear the mixture of lament and also hope, right? Pain and also confidence.

And as then one of the Song of Ascents, this psalm picks up that pilgrim theology. O Lord, how long? Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come, the hope. Final bit of context is to pay attention to this psalm in relationship to the psalm that comes right before.

It has a very close relationship with Psalm 130. And I think that's most obvious if you look at the last verse of each psalm. Or I guess it's verse 7 in Psalm 130. O Israel, hope in the Lord. Now look across to Psalm 131, verse 3.

O Israel, hope in the Lord. You picked up the same phrase. And in both of those, what follows is this explanation. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore over in Psalm 130 because God will redeem Israel.

In both of them, place your hope in the Lord because he's going to answer. Both of these psalms are similar because they're both prayers drawn from a place of struggle. I mean, look at the opening for both psalms.

Out of the depths, Psalm 130, verse 1. Out of the depths I cried to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive. A prayer as well as our psalm, Psalm 131. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up high.

My eyes are not raised too high. And there is then, there's the similarity between the two. They're definitely partner psalms. Most of the commentators observed that. Like, there's no question these two could go together.

There's pairing, but there's also progression. And I think this is actually rich. If Psalm 130 starts out with the depths, I cry to you from the depths. Psalm 131, my eyes are not raised too high. I think the pairing between these goes that if Psalm 130 has a bit more the tone of lament or despair.

It's like in Psalm 131, the psalmist has come through that now. He's on the other side of it. He's worked through the sorrow. And on the other side of it now, he's come to some sense of hope. Not that the problem has gone away, but that by God's grace, he has worked through it.

And he's come to a place of trust. And that's where now I'm able to focus our, not just context, but focus in on Psalm 131. Simple structure. I mean, it's an easy psalm to outline, isn't it? And this is from Jim Hamilton, a commentator.

But in verse one, David sets out what he does not do. In verse two, David sets out what he has done. And verse three, he sets out what God's people should do. I think that highlights the notion in verse one, we've got a contrast.

Like I've not said this way, or my attitude has not been this way. Here's what I have done, verse two. Now then, he turns to everyone else and invites them. Come, hope in the Lord, together with me. And that's my simple outline.

I mean, I'm just going to take those three sections, and each one in turn, I want to consider them with you. Let's start with verse one. My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high. This is, as you can tell, addressed to the Lord.

Oh, Lord. It's a prayer. And I'm just going to examine some of the expressions in that. The notion of the heart, the internal, the eyes, the external, are both expressions of pride. I'm not lifting myself up, like a question would go here, how do I view myself?

Where do I place myself on the social scale, assumed the way I view myself? Where do I place myself on the scale of personal sense of value? It's just a pride question. What do I pride myself in? Heart is probably all-inclusive.

It's values, it's desire, it's ambition. I think the way Scripture uses the heart, it's the notion of our core being. It's our affections, it's our love. You could express it like this. What's the stuff that lights you up?

What's the stuff that when you hear that in the conversation, you gravitate towards it? What's the stuff that you would say, oh, I really like this kind of people? And inevitably, we wrap ourselves into some of that.

The people that we like tend to have the traits and the values and the things that we ourselves pride and the things that we aspire towards. And the psalmist comments that my heart is not lifted up. My view of myself would not be aspirational in that sense that I would place myself high on the chain.

The eyes lifted up in the second phrase. Again, an expression of pride. It's probably also an expression of your thinking. In other words, what I tend to look at, perception. My eyes are my instrument of perceiving the world.

So the notion of lifting up my eyes would have the idea of my trying to go about and comprehend, understand, grasp things in this world that are beyond my pay grade. Psalm 105 uses both of these. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart, I will not endure.

That's actually both of those two expressions. And if I was going to put all of this together, then my heart parallel with my eyes, what do I occupy myself with? What do I think about? What do I try to understand?

How do I evaluate myself? What do I think I'm capable of? All of this stuff isn't related. My view of myself, my view of myself in comparison to other people, the things that I reach for, the things that I love.

Continuing the second half of the verse, to occupy myself is to walk about kind of as though I'm taking a stroll or I'm spending my time and my interaction in. The zone of things, he says, that are great and marvelous and things that are too great and too marvelous for me.

The great marvelous expression, that's a very common expression across Scripture and across the Psalms. Listen to these Psalms and see if you can catch what the great and marvelous things are. Psalm 86, verse 10, talking to God, for you are great and do wondrous things.

You alone are God. The great and marvelous things, the works of God. Psalm 136, four, to him who alone, even that word alone is striking. To him who alone does great wonders because his steadfast love endures forever.

Who does the great things? God alone. Psalm 145, verse 4, one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts on the glorious splendor of your majesty. On your wondrous works I will meditate.

The whole notion of this is that this is God's territory. The great and marvelous things, the mighty acts of God. His glory, his conquest, his nature, his plans for the ages. The psalmist looks at that and says, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

The implication being, there is a territory of things that are just entirely outside of my pay grade. You ought to work, you ought to think, you ought to plan, you ought to ponder. And somewhere in there, there's a line that says, I go this far and no further.

And beyond this point, this is God's territory. Can I break that down? Because I could talk about that in the abstract all afternoon. And maybe without it actually landing. How about, I'm going to give you three different expressions of things that would fit this notion.

Things that are too great, too marvelous for me. Things where the right and godly response has to be and must be to not lift your eyes there. To not raise your heart to that level. And so three of them.

First, what about this? How about trying, an expression of this, is trying to enter into questions that are just beyond our capacity. I like to think about theology and work through questions. Try to work through fine distinctions.

The joke with theologians is that you can forever nuance every concept. There is sometimes a vision floating around about theology and theologians. As if you've got five wizards up in the top of a castle somewhere.

Big pointy hats and lots of vials and all kinds of colors things. Some arcane writing on each of the vials. People getting out a little drop of that and a little drop of that. You mix it all and poof.

So cool.

And there is only everything wrong about that vision of theology. A vision of theology that is some kind of pride in the sophistication of the person that is doing it.

Really?

Some kind of game that is getting played up there. Like tricks. Parlor tricks or something.

Really?

That the right vision of theology puts you on your knees or on your face before a holy God who is glorious. And all you can say in awe. I can't possibly rise to even the smallest portion of the profundity, the richness, and the glory of who he is.

Theology, rightly done, makes you feel really small. Must always make you feel small. And you can go beyond that. You've got these areas of theology, all of theology really, ultimately it's got to be beyond our comprehension.

But you've got these areas that you get to them and there's just no way. I'm thinking here of the Trinity. Talk about it for a thousand years. You can talk about it for two thousand years if you want.

Because the church has. And you're not going to find a way to make this perfectly work out. Three persons, one essence. How do you make that work? Incarnation, fully God, fully man. Jesus' consciousness.

He was simultaneously omniscient and also limited and he learned. Got that? Sovereignty and responsibility, problem of evil, the infinity of God. Each one of these areas, here it's said better in the words of scripture.

Ecclesiastes 5. Do not let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God. For God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. Just remember who he is and remember who you are and sort yourself out accordingly.

And grasping that truth cannot do anything except cause you to shut your mouth. Let your words be few. And you could just continue on from that. I mean, I love Habakkuk. Habakkuk says, I'll wait, I'll stand by the watch post.

I'll look and see what his answer will be according to my complaint and God's answer. His soul is puffed up and it's not upright within him. But the righteous shall live by his faith. Job 26 .14 is a favorite here.

Behold, I mean, in the context it's talking about all the wonders of what God does in nature, in heaven and earth. The glory of his deeds. And Job 26 .14, after all of that, the majesty of nature. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways.

How small a whisper do we hear of him? The tiny slice of revelation. The tiny slice of theology that we have. Blows our brains. And these are but the whispers of who he is. And the verse continues. But the thunder of his power, who can understand?

Calvin comments. You have to get the context of what he means by this. But he comments that God lisps to us as a mother lisps to a child in order to aid our understanding. He's not meaning by that to denigrate revelation or denigrate scripture.

But just to grasp, before someone would work through a passage and walk away with a conclusion, oh, I've mastered it. One, you didn't. Two, God's speaking with just the smallest slice of the glory of the truth of who he is.

And we can't handle that. And all of this was summed up in Romans 1134. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? Who interacts with God to know his mind or give him advice?

Answer, probably all of us try at some point in our lives. But if we got it right, we would grasp the truth that from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever. That's the proper way to view life, world, and the universe.

And see, my point here goes that the attempt to enter into these great and marvelous things, to occupy ourselves with things that are too high for us, to raise our eyes, as it were, and pretend somehow that we're entering, disgusting, into the counsels of the Almighty.

And that we would give him a word or two about how he might manage his universe. Yeah, it's beyond your pay grade. And I mean, if you want, you can rail against that. You can rail against the Almighty.

You can throw yourself repeatedly against his sovereignty, like throwing yourself against a brick wall determined that if you do it hard enough and long enough, eventually you'll break through. And at the end of it, all you're going to succeed at is coming back exhausted and bloody.

You can pretend that you figured it all out. In which case, all you managed to do is deceive yourself. You could be convinced that right around the corner, if I get like 23 more degrees in philosophy, then maybe I can understand God.

You can maintain that God has no right to exist if he doesn't give me specific, satisfying answers to my questions that satisfy my personal standards for coherence and rigor. Or you could respond like the psalmist.

And at some point come to terms with reality. My heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not, maybe you could say it as a declaration, I must not, I will not, I should not, occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

There are things above my pay grade. And the sooner I just come to terms with it and accept it, it brings a whole lot of rest to the human heart. Which actually takes me to the second expression of it.

I'll call it grief or I'll call it struggle with God's goodness. You find yourself sometimes, I can think through my life and I can give you bullet point moments. You find yourself in life in situations where life just hurts.

Sometimes the hits come almost coordinated. It's almost like the Job 1 and 2 feeling. You feel like the hits are coming one after another and they're coming fast and they're coming thick. And you almost can start to wonder if God has something against you.

Is he judging me? Is he chastening me? I mean, well, and this may help. There's always, you know, you can think like, did my behavior get off track? And so God's kind of hammering me. Truth is, there's always something I need to be chastened for.

It's just the mercy of God that I'm not always feeling. Well, it's the cross that I'm not feeling the full force of that all the time. Is this just a trial? How would I know the difference? If God is good, why won't he answer my prayers for relief?

Why is it taking so long? Why is it so hard? Why do I keep on hurting? Why won't God help me? You can be looking for something. We love that. It's very helpful that expression Romans say, all things work together for good.

Sometimes what we're, we're reading that on the most surface possible level. When what we're looking for, I want a one for one, like, okay, I was in the hospital for five days, but I got to witness to 17 people.

We're looking like for a one for one correspondence. Most of life, you don't get to see, and you never do discover the one for one correspondence. Read, reading that passage, of course, better in its context.

The good is that he's conforming me to the image of Christ. See, but you get to these points where you just feel pain and it goes on and on and on and it hurts. And then after the hurt, it really hurts.

And after that, it still hurts. It feels like it'll never end. And at those moments, it's pretty natural to wonder why God's letting you go through all of this. It's the why question. At some point, sooner or later, you struggle with the why question.

This is a part of the human condition. You have a vendetta against me, Lord.

What are you doing?

And I think this psalm is so settling. Here's advice. Maybe you're there this afternoon. Here's advice to a heart in those moments. Oh, Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. The why question, what are you doing to me, Lord? What is this? Somewhere in there, you just kind of put a stop to it. I'm going to wait.

I'm going to hope.

I'll give a third expression of it. How about an expression of worry? Ironically, fear and worry are just a different form of the same kind of pride. If the last thing I was talking about, which is a brand of the problem of evil, why, why, God, are you doing this to me?

If that's grappling with my inability to understand, I think worry grapples with the fact that I can't do anything. If the former angst is an understanding problem, this is like a strength problem. I think the notion of it goes, when we worry, I'm trying to go down the entire contingency tree.

Here's a problem. I anticipate future problems. I'm looking like, if this happened, that's a branch. That would happen, but then it could be, okay. I'm going to go down those six spokes off of branch one.

I've got to come back to the trunk. I've got to go back up the next branch. I've got three spokes off. Oh, no. Each one of these spokes has seven off of it. You've got to explore all the little nodes in the entire contingency tree.

You've got to come up with plans for all those things. You've got to mark off every possibility. You've got to figure out all the contingencies for it. Surprise, surprise. All you manage to do is exhaust yourself.

The universe is too big, too unpredictable, more important. More importantly, there is already an architect for this universe, and it's not me. There's already somebody who knows all the contingency trees, and he left no contingency in it because he already has a plan, and this thing is already planned out.

I think what's actually going here, when I try to explore all the possibilities, I'm actually putting myself in the place of God. I'm shouldering aside the sovereign, and I'll plan this one out. The angst, the pain we feel in these kinds of moments is actually built into how the world works.

You feel the struggle. You feel the angst because you're trying to act like God, and it's not working. It can't work. You aren't big enough to take that job on. It's not your job. And the link again goes back to the first verse of the psalm.

Who do I think I am? To lift up my heart and to raise my eyes and to occupy myself with things too marvelous for me, such as the management of God's universe. That's the essence and the root of the worry I'm feeling.

And as an antidote to that then, I move to verse 2. Because the answer to all of that, the answer to the heart that tries to unscrew the inscrutable, figure out the mysteries of the universe, the heart that tries to answer the why question, the heart that tries to worry through all the possibilities, the answer and the antidote to all of that is verse 2.

I've calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. Christopher Ash comments, and it's really helpful, four volume commentary on the psalms. It's a great resource.

He comments, peace is the opposite of pride.

Really helpful.

The notion that the angst in my soul, it could feel like I'm affirming my weakness, I'm affirming my desperation, but that angst in my soul when I worry, when I struggle through, when I rail against, when I rail against the reality of God's greatness and my limitations, what's really underneath that is a kind of pride.

It's a brand of pride. I'm trying to answer these problems for myself, independent of him and shoulder him aside. And in contrast to that, this language just gives rest. I'm going to calm and quiet my soul like a weaned child.

Calmed is the metaphor of levelness, like leveling the ground, which makes something flat. I think the best comparison I can come up with, and actually scripture uses it at times this way, of like a river.

So I was on a canoe trip last summer, and you're coming down and you see some places where the water's starting to do this. You know the water's going to speed up there. There's rapids. There's rocks.

There's stuff underneath the surface. I met one of those trees and took a little dip, an unintended dip into the river. You know the rough places, and then you come on the other side of that and the water just smooth, calm.

And the notion of calming is like if I imagine my soul is this, and then I've calmed my soul. It's just smooth water. That sounds great. Yeah, I need to do some of that. To quiet my soul, the concept here is just, well, it's exactly what it sounds like.

It's to stop talking. So when you'll see the expression like hold your peace or keep silent used in scripture, it's probably this expression. It's just the notion of shut your mouth, stop running your mouth.

It's time to listen. It's time to just, I know, lots of questions, lots of accusations. Okay, quiet your heart. And both of these verbs are pointed inward. I mean, you can hear it just in the way it's translated.

I have calmed and quieted my soul, or it could be like I've calmed and quieted myself. I have caused myself to be calm. I've caused myself to be quiet. It's like I recognize my soul's doing this. That's got to stop.

Okay, shut my mouth, clear water, quiet my soul. Of course, the language of the soul, the deeply internal, personal, inner life of a person. And I just want to drive this home as an application here. There is a personal moral responsibility here.

You have a moral mandate to govern your own thoughts and heart and affections. You have an ethical mandate to quiet your heart. Sometimes, I mean, for sure, how many books are going to be on the front shelves at the bookstore or at Edmonton Public Library?

And it's going to be self-help stuff about how to achieve emotional health. And sometimes we talk as if we want it. But the notion of actually getting to the heart of it to make the choices that would quiet our hearts.

You have a moral responsibility and a mandate to do that. I'll hold for a second. I will talk about how to do that in a moment. But before that, I want to go to the next part of the verse. And it's this language.

It's a comparison now. It's a metaphor. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. It's beautiful poetry. You've got the two parallel lines, but they're also synthetic.

In other words, they're building. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. That is my soul within me, taking the emphasis deep within you, like your deep internal life within you.