25 February 2012

Cure for common anxiety

Gari Hatch "A Blur of Tulips" 12-02-2007 
(Archival Collection)



Why are you cast down, O my soul,
          and why are you disquieted within me?
     Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
          my help and my God.



My reasons for being cast down are the usual suspects: wars and rumors of wars, personal worries and anxieties, and fear of the future.


The shift suggested by the psalmist is to hope in God and praise him. Are all, there was that one time I recall when God brought me out of my own captivity in Egypt and mothered me through the wilderness and fathered me in the promised land.


I am not alone in my struggle and neither are you. Our wilderness wanderings wear us out. We get bogged down. The cure is to look up. As we shift our attention from the brown mud below our feet to the blue sky above our head we notice the sun yet shines.


Psalm 43:5 presents a cure for our anxiety. God has not forsaken us. We are not alone.


Your fellow traveler who speaks encouragement in your innermost being,
Jon B.