Walking in trouble.
"Though I walk in the midst of trouble." This suggests a particular phase of human experience. Sometimes troubles come upon us, crash after crash, until we are, like Job, utterly crushed; and can but clothe our selves with sackcloth, and sit in ashes. But the text indicates a more frequent, if less readily recognized, experience. The tone is gentler; there is no crashing of sudden calamity, no bursting of wild and desolating storms. The man is moving to and fro in the ordinary scenes of life, meeting his obligations and doing his duties. But everywhere things seem to go wrong; on all sides trouble, anxiety, worry, seem to attend him. He cannot get free night or day. These dog his steps continually. He walks in the midst of trouble. How true to universal experience all this is!
I. WALKING IN TROUBLE IS A MOST DEPRESSING EXPERIENCE. The constant wearing produces a fixed weariness; the constant worry produces a fixed fretfulness; the constant fear of some new anxiety produces a fixed hopelessness. Because nothing goes right, we are too ready to say nothing ever will go right. And then the heart is taken out of us; we become unfitted for battling with difficulty, and so largely increase our troubles; we make them for ourselves, as well as have them made for us. And those we make for ourselves are always the worst to deal with. There is one striking illustration of this depressed mood in the life of David. He walked in the midst of various and well-nigh overwhelming troubles, and in a hopelessness that was both pitiful and sinful, he exclaimed, "I shall now one day perish by the hand of Saul!" It may further be shown that such depressed moods, responsive to surrounding worry, very much depend on natural disposition, especially on that nervous irritability which can always see, or expect, evil.
II. WALKING IN TROUBLE MAKES US CRY FOR DIVINE REVIVING. "Thou wilt revive me." The state of mind induced by the circumstances is much more important in the sight of God than the circumstances. And this the good man recognizes. His hope is in God's soul-cheering, God's inward reviving, God's keeping from despair, and freshening trust and hope. And God does lead the walker out "into a large place," in his own good time.—R.T.