How Pleasantly the Lines Have Fallen
- Joshua Budimlic
- 7 hours ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
I suppose we all have certain linguistic ruts we fall into if we’re not careful. This can be as simple as an overused word or a peculiar turn of phrase that repeatedly weaves its way into our conversations with others—sometimes, indeed most times, unbeknownst to us entirely until someone brings it to our attention.
For example, when I first began dating my wife and spending time around her family, they were quick to notice that “pleasant” was a choice word of mine. Indeed, so much so that I hesitate to employ the word in conversation to this very day without first giving it a second thought!
But they were nonetheless correct—I really do like the word pleasant. There’s just something very pleasant about the word pleasant, is there not? A sweet, calm, and rather peaceful quality about it, occupying a warm and comfortable middle place between “good” and “beautiful,” while not excluding either from its definition.
The word pleasant lets a person sneak a touch of enchantment into their everyday life without sounding overly romantic. “How was your day?” someone may ask, to which the response, “It was pleasant,” rings sweeter than simply saying it was good and somehow less startling than saying it was beautiful, while striking just the right tenor of what you meant to say all the same. Indeed, who can eschew King David’s use of the word when he says of his life:
“The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 16:5-6).
Of all of life’s possible outcomes and endless avenues, David lands on the word pleasant to describe the lot given him.
Notice the progression of David’s praise. The object of King David’s satisfaction rests not in his lands which stretch beyond the furthest horizons, nor in his vast riches of servants, livestock, and gold, and not even in his lofty reputation as the King. The real substance of David’s joy, the very nucleus of his innermost, highest pleasure, is none other than the Lord God Himself.
Elsewhere in the Psalms we read how the writer’s soul “thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:2). Indeed—“As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). Even in his contemplation of Heaven itself, the psalmist Asaph declares, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).
David has surveyed the many pleasures of his life and, in the end, rightly concluded that God is chief among them all. Indeed, King David is what you might call a Christian hedonist. As John Piper has argued throughout the years, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” David, for all his foibles, flaws, and fatal sins, certainly understood this. A few verses later in Psalm 16, David asserts that the joys and blessings which litter his life are but a dim echo of the eternal pleasures awaiting the faithful in that age to come:
“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
The many pleasures of David’s life were certainly a dim echo of that eternal reservoir of joy in the presence of God, but they were a genuine echo nonetheless. These were real joys and real pleasures; not to be mistaken or traded for that Pearl of great price, but true treasures and blessings all the same.
Once again, notice the progression of David’s praise in Psalm 16:5-6. He begins by meditating on the goodness and satisfaction found only in the Lord (“The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup”), then he declares that it is this same Lord who guides his life (“you hold my lot”). Then, in turning his gaze upon this life he’s been given, David reflects on just how pleasant his lot from the Lord really is. To cap off his praise, as though realizing some vital piece in his thanksgiving was yet missing, he adds in conclusion: “indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 16:6).
Undergirding that which is pleasant in David’s life is that which is beautiful, ultimately leading him in praise back to the only true source of all beauty: “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
Now, I’m no musical connoisseur. Recently, however, my wife and I watched the 2016 film La La Land and—while I still have my reservations about the genre as a whole—I must admit that I was very pleasantly surprised. The movie follows Sebastian and Mia, played by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone respectively, as they navigate life and love under the lamplit streets of Los Angeles.
Both Sebastian and Mia are aspiring artists. He wants to open a jazz club where he hopes the musical medium can run free from the constraints of contemporary music, whereas Mia wants to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming an actress. Over the course of a year, a variety of musical numbers score the pair’s relationship as they work to make their respective dreams a reality, all the while balancing the many demands of love and friendship.
After a string of failures and a long-expected breakup brought on by a host of pressures, Sebastian and Mia reunite once more in an effort to secure her a once-in-a-lifetime audition opportunity for a film being shot in Europe. By helping her, Sebastian is well aware that such an opportunity will whisk Mia away indefinitely should she get the part. At this point in the story, he makes peace with the reality that they may only ever be friends, and that, perhaps, even the season of their friendship is drawing to a bittersweet close. In the end, both their dreams do come true—only, they are no longer in each other’s lives such that they can share in the other’s successes and triumphs as they once would have liked.
When Sebastian and Mia finally do meet again at the end of the film several years later in L.A., it’s by pure coincidence. While walking to their car after dinner one evening, Mia and her now-husband are drawn into the haze of a local jazz club by the music and light emanating from the entrance like some siren’s song. Immediately upon taking their seats, Mia locks eyes with the club’s proprietor and piano player—Sebastian.
After a moment of thoughtful recognition and reflection, Sebastian breaks their gaze and begins to play the very song he performed the night he and Mia first met. What follows, in true musical fashion, is an extended, beautiful dreamlike sequence of dancing, lights, and song which takes us back to the very first moments of Sebastian and Mia’s relationship, essentially asking ‘What if?’ of their story.
What if they had prioritized their relationship with one another over their artistic ambitions? What if Mia never accepted the film role and decided to stay in L.A. with Sebastian? What if, instead of starting a jazz club, Sebastian started a family with Mia? Indeed, the most poignant part of this shared vision between Sebastian and Mia is when they see the family that could have been theirs—the modest home somewhere in the Valley, the little yard with a white picket fence, the little feet toddling around the grassy lawn.
And then, as suddenly as it came upon them both, the dreamy vision fades, leaving Sebastian and Mia once again separated by a room’s length in the dim-lit parlour of the club. Having determined to stay for just the one song, Mia and her husband get up and make their way to the exit, but not before she looks back one last time at Sebastian as he sits at the piano, still deep in thought. After a moment more, he too looks up and the pair lock eyes for the last time—not in regret or mourning for what could have been, but in final, humble recognition of the fact that their dreams really did come true, just not in the way they had originally planned. She became the actress she always wanted to be, now leaving the very jazz club he always wanted to own.
The scene is both moving and melancholic. After all these years, the estranged couple has finally found their closure. Indeed, Sebastian and Mia were never meant to end up together, and now they have come to see why. These many years later, they are no longer lovers; they are, however, still friends. And without their friendship, for a short season as it may have been, they never would have ended up where they had always dreamed.
It was at about this point, as the screen faded to black and the end credits began to roll, that I turned to look at my wife. There she sat not far from me, holding our newborn son in her arms. “This is it,” I thought to myself. “There’s nothing more I have need of.” Everything I ever have or could have prayed for, of everything I could have sought after in this life, and so much more, sat right there only a few feet away from me in those two souls. Whatever dreams Sebastian and Mia may have had for their lives, they paled in comparison with what God has given me in my family, in our little life, and in His love for me. Their vision of the happy life that could have been between them was but a dim reflection, as though seen through a dark glass from afar, of what the Lord has in actuality blessed me with in my wife, son, and Himself. Indeed, their dreams were far, far too small.
“Thank you, Lord,” I concluded.
Life hasn’t always been easy, and the way hasn’t always been clear. But when I reflect on the life I’ve been given—on the Savior who loved me and died for me, on my Heavenly home, on my wife and the eternal friendship in which we share in Christ as both lovers and friends, on our little son and the little life we’ve been given—I find myself thanking the Lord with those very same words of David: “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
Indeed, what a pleasant life we’ve been given. Have we needs and unmet wants? Sure. Do we carry with us any regrets? Who doesn’t? Are there yet unanswered prayers? Yes. Is there trouble anywhere? Of course there is—but the Lord will provide, even as He has already provided. We grow so accustomed to saying that, don’t we? “The Lord will provide.” Surely He will. And yet, how often we are blind to the fact that He has already provided.
When I consider my life, meditating for only a moment on all that the Lord has done for me and given to me in His beloved Son, I find myself saying less and less that “the Lord will provide,” resting in the very pleasant reality that He has already provided far more abundantly than I ever could have asked or imagined if left on my own.
And if you are in Christ, and Him in you, the very same can be said of your life. A pleasant life is by no means unique to me and mine. If you are in God’s family, a member of Christ’s household for whom His saving blood was shed, then it stands true of you that the lines and lot of your life have so too fallen in abundantly pleasant places because of the mercy and grace of our Lord. No matter what joys or ills can be rightly said of your life up until this point, the thing most true about you is that Christ loved you and gave Himself for you, that He has gone to prepare a place for you, and that He is returning for you.
Your eternal future is eternally secure. So much so that one day you will declare that all of it, every sacrifice and shattered dream, was a light and momentary trouble when compared to the eternal weight of glory set before you in Christ Jesus. The happy reality that God works all things out for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose means we can rejoice no matter what has happened or will yet happen, because the best is yet to come.
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