This morning when I opened my fridge I was hit in the face
with a stuffiness and sultriness that smelt of food and spelt but one thing:
The fridge has been off through the night. Our fridge’s thermostat is broken
and is yet to be replaced. The makeshift plan for the moment is a timer
connected to the power plug ensuring the fridge switches on and off with
regular intervals but, with the weight of the timer, every now and then the plug
gets pulled out just a little and loses contact. Thus my unpleasant surprise
this morning.
Getting back into bed for that stolen minute or two before I
continue the morning’s rush to get everybody at school on time, I felt a bit
like my fridge. My power is off and my mood quite sultry. Moms are like
fridges. They are plugged in and they keep the family fresh and going. Every day,
day after day, nonstop. We get up, get everybody going, make food, buy food, clean
house, drive kids around, do admin, run errands, wait for kids, check homework,
prevent or solve arguments, make peace, do some work for the Lord and some more
for the school, try and keep ourselves in good shape, go to bed and start all
over again tomorrow. Yes, and in the process, the weight of it all pulls us
back and we lose contact with the source of our power and we wake up airless.
Sometimes we can’t even quite understand why we are so
airless. We might have everything going for us – lovely husband, kids, house,
help, school, church, bibles and conversations with God. Yet, in spite of all
this, everything can simultaneously feel all too much and all too little. Our mundane daily quest to survive overtakes
us.
Have you ever at times felt like this? When this feeling hit
me this morning, I thought of Psalms 42 and 43. The writer of these two Psalms
finds his soul to be downcast because he feels far from God. Scholars believe
that he is writing these Psalms from a place of exile far away from Jerusalem
where he and his countrymen used to worship God in the temple with joy and
thanksgiving and festive throng. But now he finds himself in a foreign place,
oppressed by his enemy.
We too, because we are running from morning till evening,
day after day, might at times feel far away from God. Though me might have
conversations with Him and read our Bibles, we fail to drink deep from the Well
that satisfies the soul’s thirst. That might be why we are so airless and it
might leave us with the same type of questions in our hearts than that of the
writer of these two Psalms:
- My soul thirsts for God.
- When can I go and meet with God?
- Where is your God?
- All your waves and breakers have swept over me.
- Why must I go on mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
I know that whenever I find myself in this position, I long
for a complete time out. I want to pause life for a day and restore order
around me and in me and then reconnect with God before pressing the play button
again. But that is not truly the answer. Rarely can we press life’s pause
button!! The better answer lies within Psalms 42 and 43. The Psalmist told his
downcast soul: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and
my God.” Before he did anything else, the Psalmist decided to put and keep his
hope in God his Savior and to praise Him. As physical exercise is an
anti-depressant to the body, praising God is an anti-depressant to the soul! It
lifts the soul’s focus to its Creator and Savior, its Living Hope!
Furthermore, the Psalmist realized an important fact – he didn’t
need to be in Jerusalem in the temple - the perfect circumstances - in order
for him to be ‘close’ to God and worship Him. No, God came and met him where he
was: “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me – a prayer
to the God of my life”, “Send forth your light and your truth, let them bring
me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.” God is always with us!
His light and His truth is available to us everywhere all the time. Realizing
that God is with him always, irrespective of how ‘far’ he was feeling from Him,
the Psalmist affirmed – “…God, my joy and my delight.”
About fifteen minutes after I had reconnected the fridge’s
power plug this morning, it again had a coolness and a freshness inside when
you opened the door. After reconnecting and redirecting my soul to my beautiful
Savior, without my daily routine having changed the slightest, my soul again has
a freshness and a joy to it that sends me forth on my tasks with a festive song
in my heart!
May you too put your hope in the Savior and praise Him with
all your soul and He will not fail you!
God bless,
Lize
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