Psalm 13

Anyone who's known me for longer than five minutes is bound to know that I have a lot going through my head. I'm not necessarily a busy person with a lot of things to keep track of, it's more that I have fifty useless but brain consuming things going on in my head simultaneously. These things are things like:

1. if a tidal wave were to come over the horizon right now, what would my escape route be?
2. will my grandparents be in heaven? are my great grandparents?
3. do tattoos really hurt that bad?
4. is God really real? is this just some giant delusion I'm a part of or am I just part of the minority that has it figured out?
5. if I had a million dollars and one day to spend it, what would I do?
6. how bad do I want chicken parmesan right now?
g. are my cousins okay? if my littlest cousin isn't being taken care of like I hear, is it my duty to take her and raise her and have to live in America forever?
8. is the world really going to end in 2012 like the Incas on the history channel said?

This is just a sampling of what went through my head yesterday in like, probably an hour. I'm always wrestling with my thoughts- always. It's exhausting and it makes me want to be apathetic about real things that are happening because the world seems so big and daunting in my head.
Most of the time, it's the questions about God that keep me up. It's the questions about if I'm doing everything I can to be open to his leading, questions about Hell, questions about whether or not there is any hope for certain people in my life... the list goes on and on.

I've been reading through Psalms lately. I've always thought they were pretty superficial- people are way more impressed with, "yeah, I've been studying the migratory patterns of the sheep of Israel in Habakkuk" than "I'm reading Psalms." The reason I started reading Psalms actually was because of these thoughts in my head all the time. I wanted something light and airy that I could just read and be like, oh, how nice, and then go to bed without contemplating the universe first.
But how I was mistaken, gentle readers, but HOW!

Psalm thirteen was written for people like me. Verse two says "How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?" That verse really stuck out to me because most days, this is how I feel. Anyways, it goes on in verses five and six to say "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord for he has been good to me."

I thought this was great because focusing on 1. the Lord's unfailing love, 2. our salvation, and 3. the Lord's goodness to me, always redirects my thoughts to somewhere where there is hope for the world and there's hope for me. This passage is even more beautiful to us, nowadays, than it was when it was written because we can contemplate our salvation fully now that we know Christ. If the doctrine of grace, the Lord's unmerited favor, cannot soothe my weary mind, I don't know what can. It reminds me that my burdens fall on Christ's shoulders alone if I'll let him take them. I prove to myself every day that they're too heavy for me alone to bear.

In closing, if you haven't read through Psalms in a while and you already understand Habakkuk, I recommend it. I'll be posting more about more of them soon.