[Note: Again, I’m posting this way after the fact.]
I was startled by my daily Bible reading this week when I saw Psalm 51:6. I’m used to reading something like “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” (That’s ESV.) I had always connected that verse to the heart. But I was reading the newer NIV version this time, which says “Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.”
I’ve never seen that before. This version connects verse 6 to the verse before it, about being sinful from the time I was conceived. It sounds like God was meeting with David even as he was a fetus in his mother’s womb, teaching him wisdom.
Erik and I did some digging and found out that the Hebrew which usually gets translated as “innermost parts” is actually more like “the covered.” It’s the deep; the secret. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the womb or the heart, because the meaning is the same: God can reach into the very depths of my soul AND body, and he can bring his shalom there. That’s what I need.
I noticed something else as I’ve been chewing on Psalm 23 as I walk around the European city we’re visiting this week. This time as I said verses 1-3 slowly in my mind, a new thought jumped out at me. Green pastures and quiet waters sound like some kind of zen zone, like a spa or a landscaped spiritual retreat center. But to a sheep, that’s bread and butter. Grass and water are the necessities of life. Granted, these are nice, peaceful grass and water. But maybe I’ve always over-spiritualized this verse. God is not just sending me on a restorative retreat (verse 3); He’s giving me what my body needs (verse 2).
I’m grateful for that right now as I heal. I need a shepherd who understands the deepest needs of both my spirit and my body. There are physical and emotional processes I need to go through, and I don’t really understand how to make them happen except to wait patiently for the shepherd to get me where I need to go (in the green pastures and in the “secret”). And I can trust him, as the shepherd of both my body and my soul, to do just that.