This whole chapter is about how deceptive this world is. We are taught over and over to seek beauty, value youth, strive for wealth, and glorify fame. If we can just have these things, we will be successful and happy. We will have won.
But this mindset is a trap. These enticing but worthless and deadly goals are set up by the devil to distract us from the only true thing that actually matters: God.
The author of this Psalm admits to falling for the trap for a while, until he entered God’s sanctuary, and, “like waking from a dream” (vs. 20), he recognized his stupidity (vs. 22).
Like the author here, I am often stupid. I fall for the big lie. I see people around me with bigger houses, newer cars, jet-setting lifestyles… Their lives seem easier, better, more fun.
It’s so easy to be lured into this way of thinking. But then I return to God’s sanctuary. He says, “Wake up!” I remember that old age comes for everyone, no matter how many surgeries you buy to delay its ravages. Death comes to the door of the rich and the poor, the famous and the obscure, beauty queens and plane Janes. There is only one escape in the end, and I can’t earn it or buy it or steal it or inherit it.
As today’s verse says, God is the only thing solid enough to cling to and the only thing that is eternal, always, and forever.
Dear God,
Forgive me for looking outward and comparing my life with other people’s. Forgive me for judging my success by the wrong standards. Thank you so much for your patience and for always being here for me when I come to my senses. I love that you are love and truth and forever and available to me. You are all I need, ever.
CamDevo 