Don't Worry, Be Happy
John Dulleck, who has been a follower of Jesus Christ since 1980, reminds us that despite all the terror in the world, the message of Psalm 37 in the bible is essentially, Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Or Else!
Quoting the bible, he recounts the following:
After considering the meaning of the word "fret", we are told that
“Fret” comes from the Hebrew word “Charah” which is translated “kindled” 44 time, “wroth” 13 times, “hot” 10 times, “angry” 9 times, “displease” 4 times, and “fret” 4 times (from Blue Letter Bible Lexicon). John noticed that fret is a less used translation, and that all the translations are highly charged words.
We could easily translate verse 1 as Be not wroth, be not angry, or even, be not kindled against evil doers. But what does that mean, “be not kindled”?
For a clue, John looked up the word fret in Webster’s and found not just the common definition of “worry” but a lot more. In addition to worry, fret also means to “eat or gnaw into”, also, corrode, fray, rub, or chafe.
So now we begin to see, fret or worry is not just something that we do, but when we do it, it does something back to us. As a result of worry, our being is eaten or gnawed, or corroded away.
God tells us not to worry about evil doers, not only because we can’t do anything about them anyway, we will not prevent others from their evil ways, but more importantly, as we allow ourselves to be caught up in worry, we are doing actual damage to ourselves.
As we trust in The Lord and lean on Him, His promise is that we will dwell in the land, we will be fed, He will give us the desires of our heart, and many more promises throughout the psalm.
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