Psalm 86:17

Quoted in the Believer's Bible Commentary, by William MacDonald in connection with this passage:

"This is indeed what is everywhere the great lack among the people of God.  How much of our lives is not spent in positive evil, but frittered away and lost in countless petty diversions which spoil effectually the positiveness of their testimony for God!  How few can say with the apostle, 'This one thing I do!'  We are on the road...but we stop to chase butterflies among the flowers, and make no serious progress.  How Satan must wonder when he sees us turn away from the 'kingdoms of the world and the glory of them'...and yet yield ourselves with scarce a thought to endless trifles, lighter than the thistle-down which the child spends all his strength for, and we laugh at him.  Would we examine our lives carefully..., how should we realize the multitude of needless anxieties, of self-imagined duties, of permitted relaxations, of 'innocent' trifles, which incessantly divert us from that alone in which there is profit!  How few, perhaps, would care to face such an examination of the day by day unwritten history of their lives!"


Footnote: F. W. Grant, "Psalms," in The Numerical Bible, III:330.