Psalm 38

The sickness got me down yesterday. Even to the point that I made the teary phone call to my mother. The one where someone out of a mixture of sobs and blowing my nose like mad and hic cups she got "allergy, ear infection, ear drops, can't breathe."

However with her sound adivce (cool mist humidifier and vicks vapor rub) and the Lord (the breathing part) we are back in action.

So the way I've been working this is just kind of opening the bible where it will and reading a chapter or two or even the when it strikes me. So today we flopped open to Psalm 38. And first of all the psalms as a thing are interesting to me. The study bible I'm looking at right now tells me this about the psalms "a collection of 150 songs and poems written by various authors the Pslams have been used for worship sinc ethe very beginning...The Psalms have provided comfort and encouragement to believers for thousands of years, and they'll do the same for you."

This same study bible tells me that Psalm 38 is a psalm of David to bring us to the Lord's rememberance.

Many people (the three commentaries I quckly read on the internet) think that this Psalm was written after David slept with Bathsheba/ had Uriah killed and was called on it. So yeah, he was feeling some guilt.

(biblegateway link: in the message http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2038;&version=65; and now in the NIV http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2038;&version=31;)

So needless to say in my curren state the first thing that jumped out at me was the sickness and the almost seemingly God afflicted sickness. I'm glad I read it in the Message and the NIV though because I think that in those versions you see it's so much more what the guilt is doing to David. It's not God. God wants to heal us. I mean yes when we sin there is a price to pay, but God's ultimate want is to heal our bodies, heal our minds, and to make us Christ-like. That's why David is calling out. He wants God to come quickly to help him. It almost seems like while David is miring around in all this he hasn't asked God for help. That he's found himself in the pit and that he's wallowed for a bit instead of just crying out to God. And it also shows the slope. That it's not just one aspect of our lives that ends up getting the muck on it it's all the aspects. And we have to call out to God to help heal all those aspects and all those hurts or otherwise we're just swimming around in the pit...or what was it the message said, "my life is a vomit of groans." ANd that's never good.

Lord heal all the hurts, clean up all the muck. Help us to be more Christlike, to not wallow in the mess but to show us the way out and let us walk with you and for you.