Brenda and I at Checkpoint Charlie, the former crossing from East to West Berlin. Two of our guides in Germany said they never thought they’d live to see the Berlin Wall come down. One grew up in East Berlin and one grew up in West. Many died where we are standing, trying to cross to freedom.

A friend contacted me recently and asked me a couple of simple questions: What does it mean to seek God practically? How do we go about seeking God in our day to day lives? More and more I believe we do the small things over and over: we pray, we read the Bible, we keep going, and leave the outcome to God — where it rests anyway! The 12th Step begins: “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps….”

The awakening comes from the day to day work, from perhaps the tedious, but certainly through patience. Below is a reflection on Psalm 37, which can teach about trusting God, about obeying…and the link between trust and patience.

Psalm 37

I regularly read the Psalms, and like other parts of the Bible sometimes a familiar passage seems brand new, like Psalm 37 this week.   This time through I started counting the commands — 15 in the first 11 verses, including “fret not yourself” three times!  

Trust in the LORD, do good, dwell in the land, befriend faithfulness, delight yourself in the LORD, commit your way to the LORD, be still before the LORD, wait patiently for him, fret not yourself, refrain from anger, forsake wrath…fret not yourself.  

What if I developed a habit of trusting in the Lord?  What if I had an “attitude of gratitude” and humility, meekness?  Well, verse 11 says “the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” 

Jesus said in Matthew 5:5, in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land”, and our Lord has a long section (6:25-34) of this life-changing sermon on not worrying, of “fretting not”.  

What am I worried about?  This psalm teaches me once again that I can give whatever it is to the Lord, I can commit myself and delight myself in Jesus, and perhaps even come into that promised land of peace.