Scripture
LORD, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them.
~Psalm 10:17, NLT
Quote
Sooner or later, we are going to encounter something that renders us helpless.
~Charles Stanley
We humans are manipulators by nature. We love control and we have a tendency to line up our ducks so things will go our way. It is true that the human will and determination is a powerful thing and there are hundreds of things we can do. Unfortunately, we take many of these things for granted. We can bath ourselves, feed ourselves, dress ourselves and most of us have a vehicle so we can go where we please. But there will come a time when we will not be able to pull the strings so that things happen the way we intend them. I’ve been battling a little depression so I have been feeding on Psalm 42-43 for the last couple of days.
The Psalmist felt overwhelmed by life’s circumstances. He was a descendant of Korah who was one of the Levites that rebelled against Moses but Korah had a son who was true to God and his descendants became Israel’s praise and worship leaders. Unfortunately, the sons of Korah have been exiled in Babylon and they have no Temple in which to worship. Can you imagine being taken by an invading army and moved to another part of the world where you didn’t even know the language. The Psalmist uses the metaphor of the wave to describe his feeling overwhelmed. He felt whipped out by one wave of disappointment after another. Before he can get on his feet, another wave knocked him to the sand.
We can’t allow our soul to call the shots. We pour our hearts out to God but we also have to speak to the soul. Some times we have to tell the soul be quiet. I have a daughter in the far country; then there was the devastating news of the democrats stealing the election and then Covid hit. Covid is a strange thing, it is like a roller coaster, up and down. You have a good day and think you are better but that soon deteriorates and you are worse. I have suffered three great disappointments and covid is the least of the three. It is easy to give into the emotions and just give up.
The bottom line is that we are all impotent in some areas. We are helpless to change our circumstances. We want to make them better but we lack the power to do so. What do we do? We pour out our heart to God. We get honest about our feelings and failures. We study the past and God’s faithfulness to us. We meditate on the unconditional love of Christ. In a word, we live by faith. We trust Jesus and not the circumstances. We want the circumstances to change for the better; He may be wanting you and I to change for the better and He may be using the circumstances to pull that off.
I got 6 hours of sleep last night…trust me, with covid, that is good but I am having one of those coughing spells and can’t go back to bed so I just did the blog. I bet I beat everyone up this morning.