A Reflection on Psalm 16
The world feels like it’s holding its breath.
Everything is loud and sharp and exhausted.
You can feel it in your shoulders. In your social feeds. In the way everyone either avoids eye contact or stares a little too long. It’s not just our neighbors—though, sure, them too. It’s everywhere: friend groups, group chats, congregations, grocery stores, entire nations.
There’s a low-key background dread humming underneath everything.
And honestly? Same.
So I’ve been sitting with Psalm 16, trying not to spiral.
One line keeps pulling me back to center:
“My body shall rest in hope.”
Before we go further, here’s the full psalm that’s been holding me lately:
📖 Psalm 16 (NRSV)
1 Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble, in whom is all my delight.
4 Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names upon my lips.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
I have a goodly heritage.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I keep the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
10 For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
11 You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
🧎♀️ Not Peaceful, But Anchored
The psalm starts with:
“Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.”
It doesn’t say “Everything is fine, thank you Lord.” It says, “I’m not okay—hold me.” Which feels… deeply relatable.
What gets me is that the psalmist isn’t praying from a spa day or mountaintop vision. It’s clearly written from inside tension. But somehow, still, they find something solid enough to lean on. They remember where their center is.
I don’t know about you, but that feels like the goal. Not fake peace. Just staying rooted when the world tilts.
🔁 Forward Isn’t Always Forward
The psalm says:
“My boundaries enclose a pleasant land.”
Okay—but what if it doesn’t feel pleasant? What if it feels like emotional quicksand with a side of legislative collapse?
This is the part where I remember: forward motion isn’t always linear. Sometimes healing or progress or whatever we’re supposed to be doing just looks like not giving up. Sometimes it’s circling the same hard thing for months. Sometimes it’s sideways. Sometimes it’s just… sitting still.
Psalm 16 doesn’t promise everything will feel good. It just says there’s still a path, and somehow—God walks it with us.
“You are my portion and my cup… you will show me the path of life.”
That’s not about certainty. It’s about provision and presence.
🧩 Bridging Hope and Action
It’s one thing to quietly survive the chaos. It’s another to stay present in it—with other people, with their mess, with your own.
Resting in hope is deeply personal, yes. But it’s also the thing that makes real peacemaking possible.
We don’t rest in hope just to feel better.
We rest in hope so we can show up differently.
So we don’t react out of fear. So we don’t disappear. So we don’t become the very chaos we’re trying to live through.
🛡️ Not a Bubble, But a Backbone
I’ve tried peacekeeping. You probably have too. It looks nice on paper. But peacekeeping is often just conflict avoidance in a cardigan. And if you’ve lived through real tension, you know: that kind of “peace” costs too much.
There’s a big difference between being a peacekeeper and being a peacemaker.
- Peacekeepers avoid conflict. They hush voices, suppress the truth, protect comfort, and smooth over the hard stuff so things look okay.
- But peacemakers? Peacemakers roll up their sleeves. They sit with the discomfort. They tell the truth. They create space for healing—and sometimes that starts with disruption.
Jesus didn’t come to keep everything calm. He came to make things whole. He flipped tables. He made space for people who’d been excluded. He told the truth, even when it cost him.
And he also rested.
He also prayed alone in the dark.
He also set boundaries and sat at the table with the people who didn’t get it yet.
Psalm 16 gives us that same kind of peace—not performative peace, but a peace that holds while we keep showing up.
⚖️ Starting Fires Isn’t Bravery—But Avoiding Them Isn’t Righteous
We don’t talk about this enough, but:
Being a person who enjoys being the cause of conflict is not courage—it’s control.
Some people chase conflict because it gives them a sense of power. Because it makes them feel like the bold truth-teller. Because stirring the pot is easier than doing the quiet, messy work of healing.
But constant agitation isn’t holy. It doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t make space for change—it just burns everything down. And it’s often more about ego than righteousness.
That said—conflict avoidance isn’t holy either.
Staying quiet to keep the peace can feel virtuous, but when it means silencing hard truth, ignoring harm, or shutting down voices that need to be heard, it becomes its own kind of violence. It protects comfort, not justice.
Avoiding every fire and starting every fire are both ways to stay in control.
Neither leads to peace.
Peacemaking isn’t control—it’s courage.
It’s showing up with both truth and tenderness. It’s knowing when to speak, and when to listen. It’s being willing to be wrong, to be changed, to be part of the healing.
Psalm 16 doesn’t root peace in power. It roots it in presence:
“I have set the Lord always before me… I shall not fall.”
We don’t need to win to be steady. We don’t need to dominate or disappear.
We just need to stay grounded in something deeper.
🙋♀️ Confession Time
I want to be that person—the grounded one, the non-anxious presence in the room.
But I can be reactive. I carry a chip on my shoulder. I’ve been quick to speak when I should’ve listened. I’ve shut down when I should’ve stayed open. I’ve confused control for safety more than I’d like to admit.
But I’m learning.
I don’t think God needs me to be calm all the time. I think God invites me to be honest—and to keep coming back to center. To try again. To trust that hope is still possible, even on the days when peace feels out of reach.
Psalm 16 doesn’t expect perfection. It offers a place to land.
“My body shall rest in hope.”
Some days that means slowing down. Some days it means holding still in the middle of the mess. Either way, it’s a reminder: I don’t have to hold it all. I just have to remember who’s holding me.
🎸 Cue the Quiet Riot
Let’s be honest: “My body shall rest in hope” sounds poetic—like something you’d whisper after deep breathing and herbal tea.
But some days, it feels more like: my body shall grit its teeth, scream into the void, and turn the volume all the way up just to stay upright.
And still… that’s hope.
Because hope isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s defiant. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s surviving by sheer stubbornness and a soundtrack that makes you feel something again.
And joy?
Joy is an act of defiance and self-love when the world is against you.
It’s not always loud, but it’s holy.
So yes—cue the Quiet Riot. Light a candle if it helps. Text a friend who gets it.
Let your soul rest, even if the rest of you is still catching up.
We’re still here. We’re still held.
We’re still learning how to be peacemakers—one chaotic prayer at a time.
🔍 For Your Consideration (or Journal, or Chaos Notes App)
- What does “resting in hope” actually look like for your body this week? Be honest. Is it a nap, spite-cleaning the kitchen, or crying in the car to a podcast about boundaries?
- Are you avoiding conflict, chasing it, or emotionally outsourcing it to memes?
- Are you keeping the peace—or just keeping quiet so no one thinks you’re “too much”?
- What would it mean to let something stay unresolved and still not unravel yourself?
- What if internal peace isn’t the absence of chaos, but the refusal to let it narrate your every thought?
And since no one asked but I’m answering anyway—
My techniques for internal peace include:
- Turning my phone face down like it’s a spiritual discipline
- Yelling “It’s fine!” into the void until it becomes mildly true
- Praying with my whole body by sitting silently on the floor and giving up for a minute
- Drinking something hot and pretending it’s therapy
- Saying “I release this” even when I am, in fact, not releasing it
- Calling things “spiritual warfare” when they are really just mildly annoying and/or require me to send an email
- Remembering that sometimes hope looks like not texting back immediately—and that’s holy, actually
The Pesky Postulant 
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