On Fretting

Last night I read the entry from the July 4th entry in Oswald Chamber’s classic book on wisdom, “My Utmost for His Highest”. This excited me because I was feeling a general uneasiness: viz., my inability to eloquently express my feelings in writing like my wife and friends do so well. (In truth this really bothered me because I had just written a five page summary on near-duplicate detection with regards to image retrieval and it’s application to spam fighting.). More, I felt depressed because I saw my normal abilities (as a software engineer) as so much more “gifted” than anything I could do in a church setting. The entry I read last night reminded me that my viewpoint had become skewed.

I may not have been specifically jealous of the rich and powerful but I did find myself comparing my own self to those of others.

Do not fret . . .

Trust in the LORD and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness

(short poem adapted from Ps 37, NASB)

I make a special point to read some from the Bible each morning. Slowly I have been working my way through the book of Numbers. Today I decided to take a detour from deciphering the Pentateuch to give poetry a read. I decided to flip around in the Bible until I found a good little song to read. I first happened upon Psalms 36 which reads “transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart” and decided that the chapter was not meeting my criteria for “uplifting” today. I read along and in Psalms 37, I found a chapter that spoke peace and encouragement to me and reenforced the words from yesternight. Thanks be to God who speaks in the little things of life - a comforting words from a book and through “Bible lottery” verses!