"Dark and Dreary"

"For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground, he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead." (Psalms 143:3)

  There are some things that might set us up to focus more upon our circumstances than we should; obviously, David is no one to be free from that sort of thing, whatever that thing might have been. For myself, it might be the fact that I have a wife who has serious brain damage and that my married life is not what I had imagined it would be. I have always imagined us enjoying each others company in our many travels, watching sunsets from varies places around the world. If there were some sort of contrast to what I imagined, then yes, I could make this out to be one of those; if, that is, I choose to do so, because there are other options in these circumstances! As a matter of fact, there are several different ways to look at any set of circumstances; even those mentioned above, as David in pouring out his complaints to God, the majority of his complaints are things that are not even real, but are the things that he feels like is happening to him. Let's break it down, staring with the one which is the most obvious, "the enemy hath persecuted my soul." I don't care how hard this life might get, or how many people are out to destroy you, there is only one that can harm your soul! Jesus says, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) There is only One that is able to do that, and last I checked, He is for me, not against me! Just as He was on David's side also; but David was not feeling it in the moment; or so it might appear. The second one is about being "smitten down to the ground," which is a lot like saying, "I might as well be dead, because I am that much close to it." First of all, that is not what God has planned, it is only something he was feeling in that moment; besides that, there is nothing that can stop what God wants to do in us, even when it might be us that get in the way. Your life is not over till it's over! The third is that anyone can make us to dwell in darkness; because if we have the Lord in our lives, we have the Light! And finally, that thing about, "as those that have been long dead," we might as well slap ourselves over that, because He gives us life; so much more abundant than this current life. Which takes us to the next verse; but not without mentioning this one important detail: Abundant life now is felt in the abundant life that is coming tomorrow; so no circumstance has got to affect us like that...

"Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts." (Ezekiel 37:11)