A weaned soul

Brethren, it often happens that the loss of dear friends, or the treachery of those we trusted, or bodily sickness, or depression of spirit, may help to unloose the holdfasts which enchain us to this life; and then we are enabled to say with David in one of the most precious little Psalms in the whole Book, the 131st, “I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child.” I have often thought that if David had said, “my soul is even as a weaning child,” it would have been far more like most of God’s people. But to be weaned, quite weaned from the world, to turn away from her consolations altogether, this it is which makes us cry, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Even as the psalmist when he said, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Nunc Dimittis," delivered January 15, 1871. Image by Glass_House under Creative Commons License.