We’re nearing the end of our series on the Psalms of Ascent: psalms 131 – 134 to go.

• GOD, I’m not trying to rule the roost, I don’t want to be king of the mountain. I haven’t meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans.
• I’ve kept my feet on the ground, I’ve cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content.
• Wait, Israel, for GOD. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always! (Psalm 131.1 – 4, MSG)

I call this is the “Above my paygrade” psalm.

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. (Psalm 131.1, ESV)

Politics is above my paygrade. So is governance…of a nation or state or even a large corporation. Best not to have too many opinions on stuff I know nothing about. “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.”

Right after I wrote this in my journal, I received what I would consider an extremely biased news report from a national news service on a current issue. I was immediately exercised about it and made a derogatory note in my journal… Then I remembered what I just wrote and corrected myself:

But, per Psalm 131, it’s way above my paygrade and far outside my circle of influence or control.

Peterson calls it Humility and contrasts an attitude of humility with “ambition.”

Psalm 131 is a maintenance psalm. It is functional to the person of faith as pruning is functional to the gardener: it gets rid of that which looks good to those who don’t know any better, and reduces the distance between our hearts and their roots in God…Psalm 131 prunes away unruly ambition.

…Our culture encourages and rewards ambition without qualification. We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more. To be on top, no matter what it is the top of, is admired. There is nothing recent about the temptation. It is the oldest sin in the book, the one that got Adam thrown out of the garden and Lucifer tossed out of heaven. What is fairly new about it is the general admiration and approval that it receives.

Peterson writes that “aspiration” is a good thing, the kind of thing expressed by the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3.13, 14:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (ESV)

But…

Psalm 131 reminds us to humbly NOT operate “above our paygrade.”

GOD, I’m not trying to rule the roost, I don’t want to be king of the mountain. I haven’t meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans. (Psalm 131.1, MSG)