I Still My Soul

AM Psalm 131, 132, [133] • PM Psalm 134, 135
Job 1:1-22 • Acts 8:26-40 • John 6:16-27

Sometimes I feel like these last two years have set my spiritual health back ten years. The pandemic has dragged on and on, and new anxieties have been easy to come by. During Lent this year, I was determined to set up some better habits, but knew that I would have to start small—smaller than before the pandemic. Reading the Daily Office or choosing some other lengthy commitment would be difficult for an exhausted person to follow through with and probably would hurt my self-esteem further.

To keep things as simple as I could, I decided to look through the Psalms on Ash Wednesday and see which one spoke to me. It would be my Psalm of the season. I picked Psalm 131 for several reasons. The first and most obvious reason to pick it is that it is short. If I was struggling to set aside any time for daily ritual, a short Psalm is the best Psalm to pick. As I began to repeat it over and over though, I realized that it is a great mantra for an anxious mind to live by. My favorite part was the imagery in verse 3, where I took some liberty to change pronouns around to make it feel more intimate to me:

But I still my soul and make her quiet,
like a child upon her mother’s breast
my soul is quieted within me

For the season, every day, I spent time going over this Psalm and imagining myself being cuddled like God’s baby. I thought about being swaddled, warm, and satiated every day for at least a few minutes. It got me back into contemplative practice. Now, when I’m struggling, I have that image from the Bible to go back to.

Written by Haley Hixson

St Paul’s Young Adult group is picking a new book for our TGIF club! Email me to get on our list and help us choose between books by Nadia Bolz-Webber and Rob Bell.