Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
Psalm 116: 5-7
our God is merciful.
The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
A few years ago I was introduced to the writings of a Belgian statistician and philosopher named Mattias Desmet. While I have worked in the psychiatric field for thirty years, his writings and interviews discussed a term that was new to me at the time – “free-floating anxiety.”
Free-floating anxiety, in his view, spoke of people who are disconnected socially and experience a lack or loss of meaning in life resulting “in anxiety, frustration, and aggression in which people don’t know what they feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive about.”
Isolation thanks to social media, politics, economic works, natural disasters, conflicts, and wars all contribute to this sense of dread many experience today.
We need to be connected to one another. While I do not believe Desmet claims to be a Christian, I am sure he would agree that one of the significant ways human beings have maintained their social networks and norms has historically been through faith. Faith in God unites people with a common goal and helps us find meaning in our lives.
Faith in God brings about the “rest” the psalmist refers to in the passage above. Specifically, this is the rest promised by Jesus to those who would come to Him will find.
Have you felt this vague, free-floating kind of anxiety?
“Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”