A Pleasant Lot

Psalm 16:6

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places

indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

There are very many biblical texts that seem, and only seem, to ignore the hardships that this life is. And there are many that attest to the fact that life is hard and full of things that make life very unpleasant.

Psalm 16 is not written by someone who had no hardships. David wasn’t looking around to find something to complain about in his life and finding nothing, decides that life is good. It was written by someone who looked ahead and looked up more than he looked back and looked around.

When the writer says that the lines have fallen to him in pleasant places he does not mean that everything is going his way. We know this because of the second line of the Psalm. “I have a beautiful inheritance”. An inheritance is something that you are promised but may not yet have. The value of the writer’s inheritance enabled him to say that his life was pleasant.

At this point every believer in Jesus Christ loses every reason he/she can possibly give for complaining about their lot in life. Peter tells us that we have an inheritance that cannot perish, meaning it will never die; cannot spoil, meaning that it will never rot, go bad, be less than the glorious thing that it is the day we receive it; cannot fade away, meaning that it does not age and wear out; and is reserved in heaven for us, meaning there is not a chance that we will not receive it.

Paul tells the Colossians that the Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints, meaning that while the entrance requirements are beyond us to meet, He has done a work in us and for us that makes us suitable.

The true believer who considers what God has prepared for those who are His will always be able to say that the lines have fallen to them in pleasant places since we have such a beautiful inheritance. Do not allow the hardships of life destroy your ability to rejoice in such a great truth, great promise and great reality.