Psalm 143:4 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. Is desolate; or, is full of amazement; astonishes itself; seeks to comprehend the mystery of its sufferings, and is ever beaten back upon itself in its perplexity; is dispirited. "How poor a judgment can be formed of a man's state from the considerations of comfort only!" There are trials which are wholly kept in the physical sphere. There are aches and pains of body, and disabilities of bodily organs, which have no direct connection with sin, and so no bitterness through witnessing conscience; and which arouse no feeling save the simple feeling of enduring. There are trials which have no relation to the outer world of circumstances; they belong wholly to the inner world of feeling. I. TRIALS THAT KEEP IN THE BODILY SPHERES HAVE MANY RELIEFS. Especially may be noticed those that come by sympathy. Others can understand and estimate these trials. The comfortings they present are kin with the trials. There is no secrecy about these trials; they who suffer under them need not be lonely. And of God it can be said, "He knoweth our frame," and can be in closest sympathy with us. A grief that we can tell to another is not our worst grief. II. TRIALS THAT GET INTO THE SPHERE OF FEELING HAVE FEW RELIEFS. SO mysterious is human nature; so complex are the relations of body and mind; so strangely possible is it for a man to live an interior life distinct from bodily conditions and relations, - that it is possible for a man to have trials wholly in the sphere of feeling. And these are the worst trials, because for them we can get little or no human sympathy. They put us apart from our fellow-men in loneliness. Our Lord suffered bodily on the cross; but the sufferings in feeling were his real sufferings. Yet even in these worst trials we are not separated from God. Indeed, as these belong to the spirit-region, they belong more especially to the sphere in which God works most freely. When the "heart" is desolate, there is the more need for its filling and comforting with that sense of God which may be so fully realized. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.WEB: Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate. |
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