There are two mistakes that we can make in regard to people. We can expect too much blessing from them or too much curse from them. In both cases, people tend to become the center of our lives.
We can expect too much blessing from people when we think that they will fulfill all our hopes and dreams or deliver us from the common problems of life. This can be a husband, a wife, a child, a pastor, a psychologist, a president, or many others. We can look at this person and say, this person will finally help us get out of all the bad problems we experience.
We can also think that people can harm us more than they can. This can easily become the case when people do us real wrong. We can let the wrongs or the potential wrongs of family members, church members, bosses, politicians, or others become the focus of our lives. When we get stressed, we may start to blame that person. They become the constant subject of our conversations, and they keep us up at night.
This is the common phenomenon that Psalm 37 addresses. It calls us to a different path: “Do not fret because of evildoers.” Don’t let the wrongs that people do become the focus of your life. Don’t let your anger against others and what they do keep rolling around in your head.
Now, many people have recognized that we should not hold onto the wrongs that people have done, are doing, or will do. They recognize that we should “[r]efrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil” (Ps. 37:8). Holding onto anger over what others have done, are doing, or could do ends up damaging ourselves much more than the people we are angry with.
This psalm, however, gives us another and much more important reason. We can have confidence that God will sort things out in the end: “for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away” (Ps. 37:2). The Lord will deal with them in His own time, and their time is short. When we can trust the Lord with this, we don’t have to let all the wrong things in this world drive us crazy. We can leave them in the hands of the Lord.
There is an important reason why we need to leave these things with the Lord. We have other work to do. “Take delight in the Lord” (37:4a). “Trust in the Lord and do good” (Ps. 37:3a). We have work to do. We let the wrongs of this world and our anxieties roll around in our head too much. We need to let this question roll around in our head a lot more: “What good can I do to the people around me?” And what will give us the strength to ask and answer that question? The confidence that the Lord will take care of us and will deal justly with all the wrongs committed in this world, in this life and in the life to come. That is the confidence that we can have in our Lord that will lead us to a truly flourishing life.