Psalm 42:11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? and why are you disquieted within me? hope you in God: for I shall yet praise him… I. THE DISEASE. 1. He is depressed. Aspiration has grown faint. We all know these heavier moments, when the spring seems to go out of our being, and we feel as though the tripping step will never return. We feel prematurely old. 2. He is not merely burdened, he is possessed by a feverish uncertainty. He can no longer look at things calmly and therefore truly, and everything appears to him in monstrous and distorted guise. There is no more fatal minister in human life than the disquieted eye. So long as the eye can gaze at things with cool and quiet vision we see things in their true perspective and proportion. But when the eye is shaken into restlessness its focus is perverted, and everything is seen awry. But the disquieted soul is not only possessed of a restless eye, it is the possessor of a nerveless hand. II. THE REMEDY. 1. The first step in the removal of this spiritual sickness is a realization of the personal relationship of the soul to God. Once postulate God, and all things come within the plane of the credible. 2. The second essential secret of recovery is to believe in the possibility of God's health being transmitted to us. There is a striking difference between verse five and verse eleven. In the former verse the psalmist speaks of praising God "for the health of His countenance," and in verse eleven he speaks of praising God, "who is the health of my countenance." The health of the one can be transmitted to the other. We more frequently speak of the contagion of disease. Perhaps when we know a little more we shall speak with equal assurance of the contagion of health. If evil communications corrupt good man-hers, holy communications refine them. One of the secrets of obtaining a healthy spiritual life is to obtain the fellowship of saintly people. But the transcendently important clue is to obtain the friendship of God. God's holiness is contagious; to commune with Him is to become a partaker of the Divine nature. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. |
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