What’s the thing in your life that you are just certain, if it were to be different, would change everything?  What’s the circumstance, relationship, life event far off in the future that you are waiting on to make you happier, more fulfilled, or put you in the place where you are finally able to experience joy?  If your job were different, would you be different?  If your spouse, your friends, or your kids were different, would you be different?  David in Psalm 4, takes on two challenges with this sort of counterfactual investment in the future.  First, there is the temptation towards bitterness.  Look at vv. 4-5, “When you are disturbed (possibly or are angry), do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.”  Here we find David in distress, he is at the mercy of his circumstances.  He is the object of scorn and lies, and from every appearance he is completely in the right, the victim with a righteous complaint.  Yet there is nothing he can do about it and even in that place, the temptation to become embittered and to lash out, however justified it may seem, runs the risk of plunging him into sin.  David determines that his only response to his circumstances is to “offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.”  This is far from trying to carve one’s own path in the world.  David here models the trust in the Lord that both heals the sin in our own hearts and judges justly and fights on our behalf.

The second temptation that we see in this psalm is the allure of using your circumstances as an excuse.  David says in v. 6 of those that are constantly waiting on something to change, “Oh that we might see some good!  Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!”  If only God would do this, if only he would change this, life would be so much better.  When we find our life becoming so future-oriented that we fail to seize the present moment, we betray that we misunderstand God’s promises.  God’s promise of ultimate joy is not that the weather would always be fair, that people would always treat us well, and that things would go our way.   God’s promise is that in spite of our circumstances, he is always near.   The promise is presence.  David, a master mystic and thus a seasoned diver in the deep places of the Lord, knows this well.  He concludes:  You have put gladness in my heart more that when their grain and wine abound.  I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety” (vv. 7-8)—notice again, rest is a defiant act of faith and trust.

Verse for meditation from Eugene Peterson’s version of Psalm 4vv7-8: