Nisi Dominus Frustra

Why My Favourite Psalm is Psalm 127

Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, by Algernon Cecil Newton (1940)

Psalm 127

1 Vain is the builder’s toil, if the house is not of the Lord’s building; vainly the guard keeps watch, if the city has not the Lord for its guardian.

2 Vain, that you should be astir before daybreak, and sit on over your tasks late into the night, you whose bread is so hardly won; is it not in the hours of sleep that he blesses the men he loves?

3 Fatherhood itself is the Lord’s gift, the fruitful womb is a reward that comes from him.

4 Crown of thy youth, children are like arrows in a warrior’s hand.

5 Happy, whose quiver is well filled with these; their cause will not be set aside when they plead against their enemies at the gate.

(Ronald Knox’s translation)

First of all, let me suggest that listen to this wonderful setting to music of Psalm 127, if you’ve never heard it before:

Nisi Dominus set to music by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by Jakub Józef Orliński.

Now, back to this week’s reflection. Psalm 127 has been my favourite for around five years now. I don’t recall when I first read it, but it must have been around the time I was trying to decide whether to remain at my undergraduate university or move to Oxford for graduate studies. I had all my friends, my entire church community (whom I’d only known for a year, since my conversion) in Durham, and I didn’t want to leave. I had built relationships there. I had lived in the same college room for two years, and truly made it my own. Why dismantle something that is good? Like I said, I don’t remember when I first read Psalm 127 in English, but I do remember when I first read in the Latin Vulgate translation in my university library. ‘Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam’. Even as the poor Latin scholar that I am, I mentally translated that first verse: ‘If the Lord does not build the house, those who built it will have laboured in vain’. I remember thinking those were the only words I needed to heed. It’s God that builds the house, not my earthly toils.

In the end, I did go to Oxford. I clearly remember the moment I decided to leave Durham. Those words were in my mind. God willing, I would build again. As it turns out, If I hadn’t taken the harder decision, I wouldn’t have met my husband in Oxford, and my children wouldn’t exist. That was the first time Psalm 127 guided me through a difficult change. The next time was when my husband and I decided to move to Canada, on the first day of our honeymoon none the less! I remember sitting on a beach. I remember being scared. I also remember knowing that we would build a life there, too, and so we did.

The most recent time Psalm 127 has guided me was during a daily Jane Austen-themed prayer retreat at the Anglican parsonage of Edenham (which I talked about in a recent video). During that day, I decided to leave my doctoral program and return to Oxford with my husband, the place we first met, and commit to building our family life there for the foreseeable future. With the exception of agreeing to an emergency c-section when in labour with my now-toddler, that was the most agonising decision I’ve made in my life (granted, I’m not that old yet!). I felt exasperated. I knew that I no longer believed my doctoral studies were beneficial for me or for my family; I knew there were far more worthwhile things I could do outside of academia; I knew that academia was swallowing up my whole sense of identity and giving very little in return. And yet, I didn’t want to say goodbye to yet another house, yet another set of friends.

But once again, I knew the difficult decision was the right one, and so I made it. The following days were very dark. I was reconciled, but not happy. What’s more, we were leaving a home without having a plan in place for a new one, other than knowing we would live in Oxford, where my husband had got a job. And once again, I was reminded of the words in Psalm 127; I told myself, ‘You cannot build a house, if it’s not also a house of God’s building’. Then, things happened very fast. We found a place we liked. We applied for it, thinking our chances were slim as many other couples viewed it. In what truly felt like a miraculous few weeks, we got that very place we loved, and, by the time you read this post, we will have moved into it. This new home will house the furniture I’ve collected over the years, the books we’ve both collected over the years, my piano, our kitchenware, our paintings. It will be the first home our children remember.

Now, we must of course bear in mind that petitional prayer is not a tool to get what we want out of a situation. I petitioned many times to adjust to my doctoral program in the US, that we would thrive there, and it never happened. But what petitional prayer can do, is to slowly reconcile one to a new plan God has in store. It can train our dispositions to say ‘fiat’, like Mary, and let providence take its course. Once I accepted that God wished me to build a house elsewhere, I found great solace in my sorrow. I am still not happy now, but I am hopeful. God needs our cooperation, our acceptance, to build us a house and a home. We toil in vain if we try to build one without Him as guardian.