It hurts!

Psalm 131: 2-3

But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.  O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, both now and forevermore.  NIV

I’ve always loved word searches.  You know, the printed puzzles with rows and rows of capital letters.  At the bottom, usually, is a list of words that are contained within the puzzle.  I don’t have any particular formula for solving them … I search left to right, top to bottom, and corner to corner.  But my favorite finds, the ones I find most rewarding, are the words that are spelled backwards.  When I put on my backwards lens, the puzzle looks completely different, and the hidden words that I’ve been over two or three times pop right out at me.

I’m having a bit of that same experience with this word search on “hope.”

I’m back in Psalm 131, where I was last March.

Having already catalogued verse 1 at that time, I’m now looking at verses 2 and 3.

“I have stilled and quieted my soul.”

I love that.  I’m not allowing my circumstances or my experiences to upset me or to rule my emotions, “I have stilled and quieted my soul.”

The Message says, “I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.”

Cultivating is work.  You have to first break up the hard soil, and then work in good dirt, and minerals, and a bit of nasty smelling stuff, and, in my experience, an earthworm or two.  It’s a lot of exhausting work to cultivate soil.

I realized back in March that I’m the ground on which the seed of the Word falls … I got that dirt could be enriched, that I could be enriched to produce better fruit …  but, I never until just this minute thought about it feels like to be cultivated.

It hurts!

Wow.

I’ve been cultivated!

I looked it up.  Cultivation implies preparation for growing crops … I wonder what will grow from all this work.

I’ve cultivated a quiet heart … I will hope in the Lord for what comes next!

That’s what I’ll think about today.