Fret Not

Four times in this Psalm David tells us not to do something most of us have been doing all morning. "Fret not yourself." Don't burn yourself up over the people who seem to be getting ahead by means you would never use. Don't sit and watch them and grind your teeth and rehearse the unfairness of the world. The Psalm does not deny the unfairness; it sees it clearly. The wicked draw the sword, bend the bow, lie in wait. The Psalm just refuses to let them set the temperature of the believer's day. Instead it hands us a different rhythm. "Trust in the LORD, and do good... Delight yourself in the LORD... Commit your way to the LORD... Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him." Trust. Delight. Commit. Be still. The four medicines for fretting.

And on a Galilean hillside the Lord Jesus took the promise of this Psalm as His own: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The meek of Psalm 37 are not the weak; they are the trusting. They are the ones who refused to fight on the wicked man's terms because they were waiting on a King who would set the inheritance right. That King has come and is reigning and has secured every promise of this Psalm in His own resurrection. The fretting can stop. The inheritance is not under threat. The wicked, however busy, are not running the future. Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart — chiefly, more of Himself.