Our Beautiful Inheritance
Years ago, I sat in an auditorium of college aged women and listened to a missionary share about her recent move home from a ministry she’d poured her life into for years. She described how hard it had been to be there, and how much harder it was to be forced to leave due to factors outside her control. She felt like God was stripping her of the thing she loved the most and she couldn’t understand why he would let her ministry end this way. It surprised me to hear someone I admired so much admit that she was struggling to trust God when she didn’t have any answers. She pointed us toward Psalm 16:5-6 which says, “You alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” and warned that we too might need to cling to them someday.
Though I hadn’t been in her shoes, I could relate to what she shared. I too was in an uncomfortable season and had been begging God to change things outside of my control. My young husband’s recurring heart issues kept worsening and no one could tell us why. Life felt hard, scary, and limiting. We were a young couple who were passionate about serving God and willing to go anywhere he sent us. We just never thought he would send us to the hospital… over and over again.
Since that day in the auditorium, I’ve often thought back to the missionary woman on the stage: she was right when she said I would one day need to cling to the truth of Psalm 16. I imagine others from the auditorium have had to too.
After all, our lives are full of limitations and limitations are hard. We all want our version of the good life and when God holds that back from us, nothing about it feels pleasant. I was angry when God allowed my husband to have a life-threatening heart condition, and even angrier when it led to the loss of our freedom. We’d dreamed of a life serving God through adventurous mission work and instead we got heartache and hospital stays. After God saved my husband’s life through a heart transplant I felt angry at the new restrictions he had as a transplant survivor. The good life always seemed to be on the other side of a huge, unscalable wall. Our side of the wall was full of struggle and limitations. The other side - the one we wanted to be on - seemed to be full of carefree people living blessed lives. They had my version of the good life and I desperately wanted to join them.
Many times I’ve tried to pull down the barriers that keep me from the “good life” only to end up exhausted and frustrated. In those moments, I’ve learned to turn to Psalm 16, which reminds me that life with God - even with uncomfortable boundaries and limitations -is the good life.
Let’s look at these words written by David together:
Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.
Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
In the middle of difficult circumstances, David lifts his eyes to God. He says that God is his refuge and his one good thing. It is God who keeps him from being shaken, who gives him rest. The Lord is his portion and inheritance, the one who makes him secure. And in God he can rejoice because he knows that he will never be abandoned. What a contrast this is to how we often live: looking for rest in our circumstances, fighting against our limitations, and longing for what we don’t have.
In the middle of the Psalm we read these beautiful words: “Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”
David uses the words portion, lot, lines and inheritance to evoke the image of a plot of land that has been kept by a loving and wise father to give as an inheritance to a son. The imagery of the plot is meant to convey that the circumstances in which we live - including our boundaries and limitations - have been carefully chosen by God in order to ensure we will receive our inheritance as his children. And what is that inheritance? It’s not the good life here and now but rather, as Eugene Peterson paraphrased vs. 5-6 in the Message; “My choice is you, God, first and only. And now I find I’m your choice! You set me up with a house and yard. And then you made me your heir!” Our inheritance is God himself. God chooses us and we respond by choosing him in return.
We often think that we have to escape our struggles to experience blessing, but the greatest blessing is experiencing God in the midst of our struggles. When we get less of the things we want, we have an opportunity to experience more of Jesus: more of his comfort and sufficiency; more of his identity-shaping love; more of his compassionate response to our anger and pain. Sometimes, it’s not until our hands feel empty that we finally open them to what God wants to give us - and what God wants to give us most of all is more of himself.
When I forget these truths and go back to believing that the good life is on the other side of an unscalable wall, I end up fighting God. And yet, it’s on my side of the wall, in the circumstances he’s ordained for my life, that I experience him most intimately. He met me in hospital rooms and ICUs. He met me in the boredom and frustration of helping my husband recover from yet another surgery instead of doing the ministry I loved. He met me in the limitations of having a husband whose physical and mental health precluded many things I wanted and others around me had. He met me when my husband died. And he meets me today, in every struggle, limitation and barrier of widowhood.
Dear sisters, I know you have and continue to experience pain, sorrow, limits, and losses that feel anything but good. They aren’t good! And it’s okay to struggle against them. But in your struggle remember that God is with you - right there in the circumstances he has ordained. He is your portion. He is your inheritance. He is your pleasant place and your good inheritance. And one day when we are with him, we will be able to say along with David:
“You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
In Jesus’ Name,
