Do you ever experience one of those times in life where you find yourself irritated with everything and everyone around you and then one last thing happens and you anger absolutely eats you alive? Everything that you've been storing up and holding in boil to the surface and explode because someone chopped down your raspberry bushes, and you find yourself yelling at a woman in the Speedway parking lot because she has her door wide open and can't figure out how to buckle a seat belt. Never? Well, maybe that's just me. (I didn't actually yell at her, just gripped in my car, but it's all the same sin.)
I tend to loose myself every so often to my anger and forget who I am and don't know how to get back to who I should be. Or sometimes, I worry over situations I can't fix (or don't need fixing in the first place) and wonder what I've done wrong, only to get mad all over again that I don't have an answer. And before I know it all of my relationships are out of whack and I've hurt people I never even intended to. Then, I find myself in such a state of loneliness and despair that I don't how I'll have find my way back. Simply put, like Hansel and Gretel, I feel lost.
Let me just tell you, that is the devil taking over and making me (our you) think that I have no one and no thing to rely on. He feeds my anger with lies and my despair with second-guessing and insecurities. David experienced the same feelings and wrote about this in Psalm 31:9-16
"Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many - terror on every side! - as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love!"
David couldn't do anything to relieve the heartache he experienced, and neither can I, but God can. He is ready everyday to save me and hold me in His undying love.
Psalm 25:15 shows us David again asking the Lord, "Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted."
One of my favorite singers is Plumb, and she tends to have lyrics for almost every situation in life. She had a big hit in 2010 entitled "God Shaped Hole" in which she sings the chorus,
"There's a God shaped hole in all of us,
and the restless soul is searching,
there's a God shaped hole in all of us,
It's a void only He can fill."
If I rely on only myself to get through tough times, I will never be anything but a "broken vessel" or a "restless soul." Remember in those times when the devil is surrounding you with a black forest of anger, hate, and hurt with no visible exit, filling your head with lies, that God is there waiting to guide you safely through. (No breadcrumbs needed.)
