Feelings And Foes

Scripture

I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me.

~Psalm 142:4, NLT

Quote

Feeling are wonderful at times but they are fickle in nature and cannot be trusted.

~Ya’akov

Psalm 142 was written by David while he was fleeing from Saul. He was either hiding in the cave at Adullam or the one in En Gedi; he felt trapped and alone. David said, “I pour out my complaints before Him and tell Him all my troubles.” The word troubles means being in tight places and certainly a cave would pass for a tight place. So David is feeling down, troubled, overwhelmed, alone, misunderstood, unimportant and unappreciated. Do you ever feel unappreciated or unimportant? Feeling are very real, this we cannot deny but they are not accurate indicators or reliable instruments.

When Steve was at Shepherd’s in Atlanta, I visited him one evening just before sundown. When I came out of the clinic to get into my little Honda Civic, it was dark and foggy. Visibility was less than a hundred yards. One of the attendants had shared with me a way to get to I-75 without driving four miles down the ever busy Peach Tree Street. I followed his instructions to a T but there was some turning and twisting and my gyroscope got all out of wack. Those who know me know that I have a good sense of direction most of the time but when I got to the I-75 ramp the signs were wrong. South was North and North was South. I said to myself, “Either someone got these signs wrong or else they have moved down town Atlanta.” I had a decision to make,“Do I trust my feelings or do I go with the signs.” I remembered what Herman Griffin taught us in aerospace about flying a plane, “Always go by your instrument, never trust your feelings.” So I followed the signs and turned right but my feelings continued to scream, “You are wrong, you are going North.” The fog was so thick that I could not see the down town ski scrappers and my feeling continued to protest even after I turned West on to I-20. It was not until I passed the Six Flags exits that my gyroscope flipped back around and suddenly everything was where it was supposed to be.

David felt unloved and all alone; He said, “I have no one to lean on, no one gives me a passing thought. No one will help me because no one cares.” We know in retrospect that this was not true: David’s family cared about him and later they joined him but at the moment, it seemed that he was all alone and that no one cared. The amazing thing is that God used David’s fickle emotions to teach him some valuable lessons: we are never alone, we are never unloved. It was out of this experience and other like it that David learned to be intimate with God. Bottom line: don’t trust your feeling, trust your instruments: the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

Joe David went to see Larry yesterday: still doing pretty good. I hope to go with him Thursday. Christmas activities begin this weekend with SENIOR ADULT CHRISTMAS breakfast Friday at 9:30. I am still planning the menu but thinking about fried apple pies for dessert. Then I have a breakfast in Athens on Saturday. Sunday will be a killer. Chloe WEE Care Christmas is at 2:00, then we have a 50th Wedding Anniversary in Athens and then the Chloe and MJ will star in the Children’s Play at 5:30 I think. They have Chloe and MJ cast as angels: someone didn’t know what they were doing. Then Tuesday night is the E-Tech Christmas party. I made it the entire year without getting fired. My goal was to make it to the Christmas party.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE BAILEY’S

 

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