Musings From A Rolling Eyed Turtle

In my last post, I wrote about despair.   But I also pointed out an antidote so you wouldn’t be left without any possible way out of that dire place.   If you need a refresher, take a look at my previous post. In this post, I want to take a look at some other disorienting feelings that a Psalmist honestly wrote about.  He wrote this:  “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.” (Ps 42:5) In regard to feeling “cast down”, other versions translate the phrase using these words:   Despair Dejected Depressed Discouraged Not exactly what you and I might want to experience!  But I’m guessing that many of us have faced some of those in the past.  And I’m also guessing that some of us are facing some now.  In regard to feeling “disquieted”, other versions use words such as:   Restless Disturbed Turmoil Troubled Again, not exactly what you and I would want to

Have you ever lost hope?   If so, what you experienced is commonly known as despair! Despair, according to the dictionary, is the complete loss of or absence of hope.  And if that isn’t bad enough, a sense of helplessness, kind of like feeling that you are caught up in a current with no way of escape, often comes with despair.    The temptation to despair is actually fairly common.  We live in a fallen world deeply impacted by sin and there is no shortage of things that can crush our hope. In one particular Psalm, we find the writer referencing some things he was experiencing that could have led to despair.  He was facing evildoers, adversaries, foes, false witnesses, an army encamping against him and war rising against him.  Other translations bring out different aspects of what the word “despair” might have meant to that writer of the Psalm, such as “I would have lost heart” and “I would have been without hope”. Lost heart, without hope, not a pretty picture, in fact, a rat