Moods are
interesting characters. Like passengers
on a bus they board our lives, coming and going as they please. Excitement.
Cheerfulness. Boredom. Sadness.
Irritableness. Nostalgia. Hopelessness.
Playfulness. Little do we know which
ones or in what combinations they will join us on the daily route of our lives. Nor can we always control the events that
summon them.
The Psalms may be
considered a book dedicated to dealing with moods. The authors used the most poetic of phrases
to describe their varying emotions: “My strength was sapped as in the heat of
summer” or “I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute who cannot open
his mouth.” Also, “Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.” And, “My heart leaps for joy.”
In attempting to
capture the phenomenon of moods, one contemporary song writer put it this way,
“I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell.”
That is true of all of us. Being
confined to a mortal body in a world subject to the schemes of the evil one and
the effects of sin has rendered us all a little unwell. Our various and random moods are often
indicators of our unwellness.
We may not be able
to stop the moods from boarding, but we do not have to let them drive. And rather than repressing them or trying to
quickly kick them off the bus, consider a different strategy: engage them! Talk to them and find out why
they are there. David spoke to his
gloomy soul: “Why are you
downcast?” But make it a three-way
conversation among yourself, the mood and the Lord. Quite often the pattern in the Psalms is first,
an honest recognition of the mood and its emotional impact before the Lord, followed
by enlightenment and finally resolution.
Our moody
passengers are not always nuisances, quite often they are tutors.
