“Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.”

Question: How do we experience being down, and what does this verse teach us about dealing with that?

Being down

There are times when things get on top of us, when they are crashing faster than we can repair them, and it all gets too much.
This last week was like that for me.
I had a bad reaction to my second shingles vaccination, and that wiped me out for a full day. And with some activities starting during the week, I felt pressured for time.

While I expect things to go wrong in the wider world, I am more affected when things go amiss in my church.
Last Sunday, I was so disheartened after encountering strong personal animosity from one person, that I only stayed for ten minutes.

A poem

Sir Walter Raleigh faced worse things. On the night before he was due to be executed, he wrote a poem that expresses my despondency well:

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have.
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

Dealing with being down

These last two lines of the poem answer our second question of what this verse teaches us.
And the hope of those last two lines, of being raised, is not just at end of life, but everyday of our lives – everything relies on our God in Jesus, who lifts us from our human weakness and failures, to continue in His power, wisdom, and light.

There was a good outcome for Sunday’s misadventure – I had previously been persuaded to join the projection roster as from next month, but this incident showed it would not be a workable team environment with this person, and I was able to withdraw from the roster just in time.

I think of the example of Martin Luther, and what he saw in the church of his day. Yet his focus remained on our Lord, regardless of attempts to end his life, and we are the beneficiaries of his faithful obedience. May we follow his example when things go amiss and make us downcast.