Psalm 16:6
“The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”
When I was a boy, I was walking through the church property with my dad, as we came to the corner of the property there was a stake with orange painted on it. I asked my father what that stake was, and he told me that it was the boundaries of the church’s property lines. He told me that at every corner of the church property there was a stake that marked the property lines. Since then, I have seen some sort of marking at each property I have owned. Those markings are the lines of my property.
That is what the psalmist is talking about in the verse above. The “lines” that he is talking about are the boundaries of his heritage. As he looked at these lines, he says that they fell unto him “in pleasant places.” He wasn’t complaining about his heritage, in fact he called his heritage “a goodly heritage.” Yes, he could have found fault with the lines that had fallen unto him, but he chose to accept those lines as the lines that God intended for him to have.
God has also marked the lines of your life. In the lines of your life you will find blessings and heartache. You will find in the lines of your life good and bad. There will be times in your life when inside the lines of your life you will experience sickness, heartache, financial pressure, job insecurity and other calamities. Likewise, in these same lines you will find the blessings of God. You will find times when everything is going right and it seems as if God has finally come through. These lines in your life can either be looked at as good or bad.
The only way the lines of your life are going to become pleasant places is for you to stop comparing your life to others. One of the reasons many get upset with their life is because they look at what others have and complain. Your life will never be a pleasant place as long as you compare what you have with others. When you compare your life to others, you will always find that they have something you don’t have. What you don’t see is their unpleasant places. When you look at the lines of others, you are looking from the outside. You won’t see the “unpleasant” places of heartache that they carry. You must come to a point of accepting your lines if you want your life to become a pleasant place.
Moreover, your lines can become a pleasant place if you will count your blessings. I am constantly amazed at how those who seem to have the biggest heartaches are those who seem to look at what they have as pleasant places. My friend, if you will stop looking at what you don’t have and discover what you do have, then you will find your heritage is a pleasant place. Your life isn’t all bad. If you would write down all the good and bad in your life, you would probably discover that you have much more good than bad.
You have a choice to either accept your lines or complain about them. If you will accept the family and life situations that God has placed you in, you will find that they are pleasant places. Let me encourage you today to count your blessings. It is only when you begin to count the blessings of your life that you will see it is a “goodly heritage” and that your life is a pleasant one.