I find it encouraging to read Psalms in which David is lamenting, calling for help, or just feeling plain shitty. Sorry, David. I don't want to seem like I'm taking comfort in your pain. Really, its more that I'm taking comfort in your honest approach to life. There is a reality that we feel and see and hear and taste and smell around us. And this is real, right? This is what we are born experiencing. David felt it and lived within it, this creation of God. But what kind of reality does God live in? Of course the immediate and safe Christian doctrine answer would be that He is here, now, with us. And this is more true than we pretend to know, but there is something more. There was God before there was the ground we walk upon, which tells me that this reality is not the be and end all.
So how does this apply to encouragement when feeling down? Well that all depends on whether or not you believe it possible to live beyond what we see, hear, feel, etc. God created this container we call "reality" for us to exist in, but did He intend for us to be confined to it? Was it really to contain us? Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of Heaven is near. He told His disciples to preach the same. Is "near" a measurement of time or location? I actually just looked it up. So...
I used Matthew 10:7 when Jesus is commissioning his disciples he says "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." (NAS) The Greek verb that is translated "is at hand" is eggizo. It means to draw near. [look here] I also looked in an online study Bible and saw a footnote for that verse saying that it littoral meant "has come near." [look here] So unless it has left, it is still near, right? Well, it gets better...
Right after verse 7, Jesus commands His disciples to go be crazy asses:
He said, "8 "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give."
I mean... what?!? Who does that?? Apparently they did. Human beings, living with a command to be supernatural. And I know people will argue that just because the disciples were given the ability to apparently function in the supernatural does not mean that we are as well. But Let me just say one thing. If I know human beings, just like me, in the past have been able to, then there is no way in hell I'm not going to try to live my life like that, too.
This was all just a spontaneous train of thought so I don't really know how to end it. But I did just want to add that the reason I started writing today is because by 9am, this had already been the shittiest day of the semester. I had every intention of just writing out some sort of pseudo-complaint disguised as an intelligent line of thought and I feel like God redirected me into the way He wants me to think, and that's really pretty damn cool. So anyway, I'm just going to leave it like that and go to the post office.
