A portion of my 📝📝📝 from reading through Psalm 16 today:

"The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;

    you hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

    indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." (vv 5-6)

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The psalmist is declaring his contentment with his chosen portion: the Lord.

    "The psalm describes the psalmist’s satisfaction with the Lord and His provision. The song promotes contentment with the arrangements of one’s life, seeing them as providentially ordered." (ESV Study Bible)

    Are there things in my life that I do not think have fallen in pleasant places? What are those constant complaints that I utter daily -- inconveniences that I do not think I deserve, which is why I grumble?

    The psalm encourages me to see my life as sovereignly arranged -- the commutes, the workloads, the daily weather, my finances, the relationships I have, and even the uncomfortable rooms I have to step into and circumstances that stretch my patience -- not one detail in them happened "by chance." They are providentially orchestrated. 

    Contentment is hard to achieve when I seek it through the things I have and do not have. But like the psalmist, the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, and with this, my "lines will always fall in pleasant places" -- not by my own finite understanding but according to His wisdom.


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