FESTERING FROWNS

Sadness is a mantle that often drapes over the soul and shadows any light from penetrating one’s reason. That is part of the human condition. It is very natural to me that a person would have moments of sorrow and grief. There is nothing in scripture to me that suggests God plans on sheltering any of us from these experiences.

The only thing we can not know is the type of sorrow that will befall us. The scriptures promise that the Lord will not burden us with more temptation than we can bear, but I know in my own life the emotional pain of some experiences has hardly been that bearable in my opinion.

With joyous occasions I don’t think the response we have is that hard to understand. Happiness and blessings are generally something that easily lend themselves to praising and thanksgiving. We feel great and don’t have any problem sharing our joy with others or the Lord.

Giving thanks for the tough times is a lot harder. And I don’t think that God doesn’t understand our reaction.

Unfortunately there are those who confuse murmuring with sadness. We know the consequences that befell the people of Israel when the murmured. But the only thing is that they were complaining about the Lord. They were questioning his ability to keep his promises. Basically their mindset was the opposite of faith. It was “woe is me and it’s all your fault God because you are going to help me keep from being in danger.” I’m paraphrasing to a degree. But I think the reality is there that on a spiritual level they allow their unhappiness to be directed towards a lack of willingness to trust God. And this happened after he had already proven to them on several occasions that should have given them a solid foundation for trusting him.

For me there is a big difference between faith and thinking positive. I admit that I am prone in many ways to think the worst when a crisis happens. Mainly because in my life I’ve had too many occasions when the worst did take place.

Yet the fact that I’m writing these postings is for me evidence that my experiences have not kept me from knowing God does keep his promises and being willing to believe he did. Do I understand why I haven’t experience that fulfillment in so many situations? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

But I have tried to learn from them and keep marching despite those crushing moments. And that for me includes being sad when I am truly sad.

Which is the key ingredient to coping in these situations. Honestly about one’s real feelings is so essential. God would prefer a prayer of pain that was honest to a praise that was not. And regrettably there are too those who for the sake of image will hide their frowns and pretend to smile. Their lips speak of faith, but their hearts are full of suppressed anger and resentment. Left to fester without bringing it to the Lord can at times give Satan a fissure in one’s spiritual armor to help lure one away from the Lord. It may take a long time, but left without being faced the frown will fester and eventually manifest itself in some expression that has as rebellion its motive.

I pray we will all yield to our deepest inner feelings when seeking the Lord. A true part of giving is giving fully of oneself, which is sometimes the one thing we try to keep from offering.