The Spirit's Whisper

Why are you downcast, O my soul? 
       Why so disturbed within me? 
       Put your hope in God, 
       for I will yet praise him, 
       my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:11

Today’s Reading: Psalms 40-42; Acts 27:1-26

The Psalmist has some serious inner dialog going on here. He is talking to his soul, asking why it is so down. He is reasoning with it to help lift it up.

Have you ever had those mornings where it was just entirely too hard to get out of the bed? Maybe you were sad about something; you lost your job, broke up with a significant other, or were let down by a friend. Part of you just wanted to stay tucked away under the covers and sleep the day away.

Some of us deal with depression by sleeping our sorrows away. Others of us eat them away, or escape from them through drugs or other risky behavior.

But when we are doing these things there is always that little voice inside that is trying to steer us back on the right path. There is always part of us resisting, trying to lift us up so that we can stand on our own two feet again.

This is what I see in the passage above. I see a person who is feeling down and out. They are feeling like there is no hope, no future, no possible way out of the troubles of the day. Their soul is low and sad. They are stuck in a rut. But from deep down within their spirit came the voice that wrote this psalm crying out to the man’s soul to pick itself up and praise its way to happiness.

When we are feeling down by no means are we totally out. Try to listen to that other voice that we all have within us; the voice that laughs when the rest of you wants to cry, the voice that sings when you are in the shower, that laughs at yourself when you trip and fall, that looks at hardships as opportunities to be blessed, that finds love through the shadows of hate.

Just remember that this voice is within all of us. It is up to us whether or not we want to listen to its song.