Day 2: Psalm 137

Adrenaline is a powerful thing. It can keep your body moving, even when your heart needs to stop and rest.

In the last few days, I’ve noticed the adrenaline of the last two weeks has begun to wear off. It’s not just me, it’s a lot of people I talk to. In the first few days of the quarantine, the cortisol, serotonin, and dopamine in our heads were all disoriented, unable to grasp the unwelcomed change. The only response is to rush through it like a ring of fire hoping the adrenaline can get you through. When it doesn’t, there is a sadness. Perhaps you have felt yourself resisting the sadness. The sadness is an admittance that life isn’t normal. You are now trying to make life as normal as weird can be. Have you let yourself grieve something you have lost? It’s not dramatic, it’s important.

Last night, Rosanna and I were doing dishes and she found a water bottle in the garage with mud on it and she went to clean it off. “What’s the mud from?” I asked. “From the field next to the boys school,” she replied. Every day after school she takes the kids to a field to play with their friends. “Ugh. I miss the field,” she said. You are probably having a thousand moments like that. There is a fine line between self-pity and self-reflection. For the people of God in Psalms, there is a lot of self-reflection. At one point, they find themselves in captivity in Babylon. They are disoriented. They are trying to make life as normal as weird can be. It says in Psalm 137:1-2,

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.”

They missed the life that they had. It doesn’t make us weak to grieve the small losses we’ve suffered. It makes us human. Allow yourself to “sit by the river in Babylon” for a few moments. What do you wish you could do that you can’t? You may not have suffered as much as someone else, which often makes us trivialize our ache. Quite often, we will say “I know compared to _____ I don’t have it so bad.” True.

At the same time, we neglect God’s comfort when we don’t grieve what we miss. He wants to bring comfort to you today in your uncertainty and loss, no matter how big or small.

Pastor Jared