Or 'say it different'...
'When hopes and expectations do not come to pass as expected, or even more importantly, when all the promises you set your expectations on, slowly or suddenly vanish, then the heart gets sick; and that can be a physical sickness as well as mental and emotional trauma.
When someone or something blows your dreams out of the water, it deflates all the wheels of your motivation. You sink under disappointment and even despair. This can lead to depression and anxiety, stress and fatigue.
Yes, fatigue! Suddenly all strength seems to drain from your body. Your energy suddenly vanishes, and it becomes an effort to carry out even the everyday tasks. You wonder why you feel so tired. Body, mind, and spirit, are joined together, and affect each other in ways we might not expect.
It can even go further, with headaches, chest pains, shortness of breath and a multitude of other symptoms. The heart can become physically weakened and create serious problems to your health. Your immune system falls apart in response to the calamity that your mind is registering.
The writer of this proverb (many thousands of years ago) could have been giving a diagnose for many millions of people suffering from similar symptoms today. When your world comes crashing down around you, when reason and commonsense cannot explain what is happening, the body goes into a 'shock' state through anxiety and astonishment.
That is why the keeping of our word and not breaking promises to one another is so important. Justice and doing what is right can be the health and wealth of another individual, and that will also have a real impact in our own lives to a degree few ever discover.
Of course, the second part of the proverb is what we really need to focus on.
'But when the desired hope or promise comes; when the expectation turns up, even though it got sidetracked, denied, stolen, or simply delayed, it becomes a tree of healing and a tree of life. The past disappointment flies away and the sun rises on you once again bringing health and restoration. It brings the promise and the assurance of all that you believed and hoped for.
We have to learn to look beyond the disappointments and frustrations, and keep moving forward. It is easy just to sit down and give up, but that must never be our action. Don't let the enemy of souls trample you down.
The Bible tells us to 'trust in the LORD with all of our hearts, and not to rely on what we think about the situation'. (Proverbs 3:5)
God knows where we are right now. He sees the injustices and the disappointments that afflict our lives.
He tells us to commit everything to him, and he will bring things to pass in spite of the evil devices that are sometimes used against us. (Psalm 37:5)
Finally, let me say, God is able to bring back more than the enemy might have stolen from you.
God is not mocked, neither is he confounded by feeble men in who live on what is but their borrowed breath of life.
Pilgrim Warrior
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