Some might justifiably say that bloggers spend too much time in self-reflection. After spending some time thinking about Psalm 4, which I read recently during my devotions, I doubt that bloggers, or most other people, spend enough time in the type of self-reflection described in verse four of that Psalm: “Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.”
King David wrote this Psalm. We don’t really know what his circumstances were when he did so. We only know from verse two that people were turning his honor into shame and from verse three we know that he was calling out to God for his defense. In verse four, he seems to be saying to his detractors, “God is holy. Even if I have unknowingly wronged you, search your own heart when you go to bed tonight. Don’t talk to anybody else. Don’t stew about my wrongs. Don’t write down your thoughts. Instead, just lie in bed, completely still, and examine your own heart. Seek its motivations. Ponder its desires. I have an idea that you won’t like what you find. None of us do. But it is in the acknowledgment of such things that we find mercy for others and peace for our soul.”
I love what Matthew Henry had to say about Psalm 4:4:
“Commune with your hearts; examine them by serious self-reflection, that you may acquaint yourselves with them and amend what is amiss in them; employ them in solemn pious meditations; let your thoughts fasten upon that which is good and keep closely to it. Consider your ways, and observe the directions here given in order to the doing of this work well and to good purpose…Choose a solitary time; do it when you lie awake upon your beds. Before you turn yourself to go to sleep at night…examine your consciences with respect to what you have done that day, particularly what you have done amiss, that you may repent of it…”
We enjoy the type of self-reflection that explores our hopes and dreams, but we loathe the idea of going deeper—to the place where our motivations lie. We do anything possible to avoid it. We use noise, or activities, or various substances. We run from silence, fearing that our true motivations will finally find a voice, and then have the audacity to tell us that we must change. But by running from such moments, we run from the only true method for finding peace within our soul.
Technorati Tags: self-reflection, Psalm 4, Matthew Henry
