You alone are my portion and cup Psalm 16, Day 38, Feb 7th, | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Eleven lines, but so much balm. I have heard the Psalms all my life (a cradle Catholic) and have been reading them myself for 4 decades, since my teens.

This is one of those Psalms which instantly calms me, the words themselves, even before the meaning penetrates my consciousness. Without meaning to sound mystical, it’s like a bell summoning me to another realm.

NIV–A prayer for safekeeping, and a Psalm of trust. Along with Psalm 23, it underscores faith/trust along with conformity to God’s law as the essential characteristics of those who bring their prayers to God.

Psalm 16

¹ Keep me safe, my God,

for in you I take refuge.

² I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;

apart from you I have no good thing.”

Moses refused to enter the promised Land without God, “unless your presence goes with us.” I am with him. I don’t think I would enjoy even the things I most want unless I could enjoy them with the consciousness of God’s presence, the waterfall of his blessings pouring down on me.

³ I say of the holy people who are in the land,

“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”

⁴ 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.

⁵ LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
The Lord himself is our reward.
   you make my lot secure.
⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
As they have for me, though in the fourth decade of life
   surely I have a delightful inheritance.
The inheritance of faith, of being in the long line of those who have tasted of God, and found him good.
⁷ I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
   even at night my heart instructs me.
It is one of the better times to have a rendezvous with God, and hear from him. Long hours of insomnia!!, no distractions.
⁸ I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
   With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
At my right hand, as sustainer and protector. God will help us to stand firm through all the shakings of this world.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

¹¹ 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.

ESV The path of life. A master metaphor of the Bible. The covenant provides a path by which one walks to life in all its fullness.

The pleasures the Psalmist has begun to enjoy in this life will continue in the life to come.