6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. ~ Psalm 23:6 (NKJV)
By Bro. John L. Cash
I’m having a hard time writing a devotion this week because I feel pretty bummed out. This week started off with a hard funeral at our church, and Susan and I haven’t slowed down after that. I’ll probably tell you about it later because we’ve witnessed a lot of blessings lately. But it will have to wait because I just don’t 
have enough umption in my gumption to write it down right now. It’s always my custom to get wound up super tight before a funeral and then to be worn out for days afterward. If the universe were a giant bakery, I would be the last doughnut in the box, four days old.
And I always hesitate to write when I’m having a bad day like this because it feels like I’m complaining. Besides, my readers always get concerned and worried and everything and send emails that say, “Are you OK??”
So, please don’t worry. I’m perfectly OK. I don’t need electroshock therapy. Maybe just a trip to Hot Springs for mineral baths. Or some sunshine. And a nap.
When I was growing up in the 1960’s, I always loved anything to do with NASA. I especially liked reading about the astronauts who flew in those early space 
capsules, like the Apollo ones that went to the moon. Something that impressed me was that those astronauts endured all sorts of jarring sounds, jolts and vibrations that would terrify the average person. But the astronauts experienced all those things without any change in breathing rate or increase in heartbeat—because they had been trained to know that these bumps and crashes were normal. Now that, my friends, is a valuable lesson for all of us to learn.
So, whenever you’re having a bad day, it’s good to take the Scriptures and work backwards. As children, we all memorized the 23rd Psalm. And in that chapter, King David makes a declaration about our Lord: “He restoreth my soul.” That verse tells us something about the kind of God we serve. He is a God who is able to fix our inmost beings.
And by working backwards we learn something about the nature of ourselves: not all days are equally good. Sometimes our souls are in need of a restoration.
So, I guess the message for today is, “If you’ve got the ‘blahs’ today, don’t sweat it.” Everybody has a bad day sometimes. That just comes with the territory. But it is a great comfort to know our God is the Great Soul-Mender.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 29 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days has a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where the preacher is already feeling better.) Their kids include Spencer (age 23), his wife Madeline (age 23), and Seth (age 20).
