Psalm 31
January 31
Is there someone you really trust? Trust is a precious gift,
given out with discretion. Trust, hope, faith and belief are common themes throughout
the Bible. It is God’s gold standard, His benchmark by which all other things
should be measured against. Few psalms speak more about trust than Psalm 31 and
several psalms following this one.
We should be cautious on giving our trust but the person we
should be the most leery of is the person we see in the mirror. We don’t want
to let down our guard around others but how often have we let our own selves
down?
A better place to anchor our hope is not with others and not
within and but above. Be sure, others will let you down and you will let your
own self down. And in all honesty, there are times when we feel God has let us
down.
So what do we do? Go back to trusting yourself or your
health or your wealth? Anchor all of your faith in your loved ones or your philosophy
or your political party? How’s that working for you? Even if that works for a
while, eventually everything EXCEPT the Lord will fade away. David saw that self-reliance was futile, his
body was weakening; his soul was tiring; those around him were falling. “But as
for me I trust in You O Lord.”
This Psalm begins with trusting God, uses two different Hebrew
words four different times to convey trust (verses 1 and 19 convey "protection"; verses 6 and 14 emphasize "confidence"). And it ends with a close cousin to trust:
hope. A good way to remember in whom we should trust is to spell out the word
FAITH this way: Forsaking All, I Trust Him.
