Reactivity or Relationship – Br. Lain Wilson

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Br. Lain Wilson

Reactivity or Relationship

Psalm 37:1-12

I’ve recently cut down on my news consumption. Part of this has been a very intentional management of my devices – disabling notifications and removing the temptation to refresh the news app. A consequence of this has been a more careful noticing of how what I consume affects me, physically and emotionally: how a headline or image spikes my pulse and makes me seethe inwardly, or how I find myself desiring or actively seeking out the safe, the cozy, the feel-good as a way of reasserting calm. I’ve been able to notice much more clearly how deforming this mode of engagement can be.

I mention this because I feel myself convicted by our psalm today, Psalm 37. Do not fret yourself. Put your trust in the Lord. Take delight in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. Be still before the Lord. Refrain from anger. I’m convicted because I can recognize how often I’ve found myself doing exactly the opposite – and often at the prompting of what I habitually consume.

Psalm 37 offers an invitation to step outside this current of consumption and emotional reactivity.

The psalmist doesn’t deny that there’s something wrong – there are evildoers and people who profit from wrongdoing. We can see them, we read about them, we watch them online. It’s very easy to react to this emotionally. I’m sure you have your own version: receiving a notification on your phone and feeling your blood boil. The psalmist tells us that this way of being, of consuming and reacting, is not how we were created to live. We weren’t created to be consumers, deformed by stimuli, but people transformed by relationship.

The psalmist identifies this primary relationship as between us and God: “Put your trust in the Lord and do good. … Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him” (Psalm 37:3, 5). This relationship, built on trust as something offered, is transformative because it demands we turn over to God the satisfaction of our own emotional reactivity, acknowledging and depending on God’s own power at work in the world. This is a powerful invitation to surrender.

Does this mean that we should become emotionally uninvolved or passive? The psalmist would disagree. The building of relationships is what enables fruitful action: “Put your trust in the Lord and do good. … [The Lord] will make your righteousness as clear as the light and your just dealing as the noonday” (Psalm 37:3, 6). Righteous, prophetic anger has a clear presence in Scripture and in our world, but it requires a solid basis in relationship. When we let ourselves lead with our own emotional reactivity, the foundation of our actions is as weak, fleeting, and changeable as those emotions themselves. But when we base it in relationship, when we let our trust in God’s power and provision be absolutely primary, we have a firm foundation, and all that we are and all that we do will have integrity.

Amen.