Up around the bend

Every have one of those days?

You know the kind I'm talking about. You get up in the morning, and when you swing your bare feet onto the floor, you step into water from a busted pipe? Or you go to let the dog out of the back door and the door falls off its hinges? Or you try to fix a couple of rooms that need fixing and the more then folks doing the fixing dig into what needs fixing the more dollar signs grow like kudzu on the side of the road.

You know, one of those days.

Happy, happy, happy, we think the scriptures tell us to be. But that's not the way I read much of them, especially the Psalms.

But the writer of one of the Psalms was anything but happy, happy, happy. He is honest and forthcoming and doubtful and weary and worried and filled with anxiety. In other words, he's one of us.

He wrote, "Answer me quickly, Lord; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit. Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life."

Ever have one of those days?

You can't find your glasses, till you look in the fridge and there they are. You look for your keys, and you can't find them till you pick up the garbage to take it to the curb and you hear them in the bottom of the bag. You get out to the car, and it won't crank. You finally get a jump for your battery and you're out of gas.

One of those days.

I have to be honest, as I normally am in these things, yesterday it seemed to me that the world, my world, was teetering on the brink. It was the kind of day that you simply laugh at because so many things were happening all at once and go on from there.

I'm reminded of Job as he railed against God, and then God's answer to the screaming and shouting. God simply asked him over and over, have you done what I can do? In other words, shut up and take it and I'll be there for you in the end. I don't know what's coming around the bend, but as John

The Psalmist writes it this way: So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed. I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. I spread out my hands to you; I thirst for you like a parched land.

See, the problem with one of those days is when we let those days turn into those weeks and into those years and suddenly we turn around and there is little left to trust with. We are just flat out dismayed and our spirits grow faint.

But there's a better way, and the Psalmist finally turns to it.

He concludes, "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground."

The kids might not always listen. The TV might go out one day. The bills might mount like rising snowmen. The woe and anxiety might simply grow till there is no peace to be found seemingly.

But if, and it's a big ol' honking if, we learn to say, "Teach me your will, for you are my God..." we have more than a chance of doing the next right thing and living through all of those days.

I know. I do this all the time.