“My times are in thy hand…” – Psalm 31:15
David trusted God with each day, and with all his days. The individual days and the collected days of his life he knew rested in God’s hands. David, who had been a somewhat forgotten son but chosen of God and anointed by His prophet. David, who had carried cheese to the battlefield for brothers but then became the warrior of Israel. David, who went from shepherd in the fields to sovereign over a nation. This David surely knew change.
David found comfort in times of trial by resting in the knowledge that the One outside of time held his times in His hands. David could know, as one writer puts it, that change does not rest on chance.
This understanding lends weight to the Psalmist’s declaration in Psalm 31:5, “Into thine hand I commit my spirit…”
Some 1000 years previous Moses expressed this truth in Psalm 90, that the Timeless and changeless One cared for those who live under the rule of time and change. Nearly 1000 years after David lived, when the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ, approached the cross and suffered for mankind, He too found comfort in this truth. As Jesus approached His final moments under the duress of time He voiced the words of verse 5, “Into thy hands I commend my Spirit.” As Spurgeon expressed,
“These living words of David were our Lord’s dying words…”
Some embrace change, others resist it, but what no one can achieve is to avoid it. Much of human existence revolves around the restless nature of time, and with that may come confusion, fear, excitement, bitterness, and countless other reactions and emotions.
But the knowledge that our times rest securely in the Sovereign hands of God should be a soothing balm to the believer’s mind.
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