Spiritual Aspirin

The joy of the LORD is your strength.

Nehemiah 8:10

Doctors speak of the “threshold of pain,” the level of awareness at which a person feels pain. Some people have a high threshold; others have a very low threshold. When you take an aspirin, it has no effect on your physical problem. All it does is raise your pain threshold so that you must experience more pain before you are aware of it. The aspirin makes you feel better because you don’t know how bad you feel.

Joy is like that. Happiness and joy are spiritual aspirin. When you are filled with the joy of the Lord, the hurts around you don’t touch you so quickly.

I have found that music raises my threshold of psychological pain. On days when I am discouraged, I’ll go home, turn on the stereo, and begin to listen to music. God uses that to assuage my soul and bring me out of pain. Is it any wonder that Saul required David to come and play for him on the harp to bring him out of his depression? That’s what music can do in our hearts.