“Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?”

(Psalms 42:5, 43)

Who can understand the restlessness of the human spirit? Can you explain the vagrant moods that grip you, sweeping you up to giddy heights of exalted excitement, or casting you down to brooding depression?

The old Psalmist, in pessimistic puzzlement, inquired of himself: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?”

Michaelangelo, with exquisite sympathy for, but with an overwhelming sense of mystery before the human soul’s restlessness, carved for the tomb of the Medeci, his famous figure of “Dawn” as a slumbering female form, beautiful of face and limb, but agonized in contorted movements like a dreamer in a nightmare, to express the restless soul in the reposing body.

Psychiatrists skillfully explore the labyrinthine ways of the human mind to lay bare the causes of fear and anxiety and depression and guilt, but how often the reasons for the soul’s elusive restlessness escape the most skillful physician who, in all honesty, must inscribe on his patient’s hospital admittance card: “No Diagnosis.”

Lately, we have all been shocked and saddened by the tragedy of those two Memphis State students’ deaths — one a murder and the other, a suicide. The only explanation offered by family and friends is that the one responsible was suffering from “depression.”

St. Paul, in this section of his Corinthian correspondence which we read this morning, sheds rich light on the perplexing, perennial problem of the restlessness of the human soul as he grapples with this fact in relation to the Christian Gospel of the Resurrection. Because of Easter, the restlessness of the soul is better understood and more creatively handled by all of us when we see our lives in terms of three great contrasts Paul outlines in these paragraphs of his Corinthian letter.

First, St. Paul points to the contrast between the decaying flesh and the renewed spirit. “We faint not,” writes Paul (that is, “we do not lose heart”) “for though the outward person perish, yet the inward person is renewed day by day.”

The mortality of human beings should be apparent to us all. Fast fades the flower of youth. Senses, faculties, tastes grow faint. Our strength falters and fails. The threat of extinction frightens the human soul and much of the restless striving of the human spirit may be laid to its aching awareness that “man is as the flower of the field . . . so he flourishes . . . but the wind passeth over it and it is gone.”

Sometimes we are better able to accept this taint of mortality for ourselves than we are for those we love. We know that such are the terms on which life is bestowed. Bravely we pace ourselves to take what each stage of life affords and be satisfied. But when we see this destruction coming to others — how many of us would say with that character in the Eddy Duchin story that among our most poignant experiences are “seeing our parents grow older,” or a dear friend slowly dragged down to death.

But, St. Paul says that the Christian, supported by the Gospel of the Resurrection, finds within a counter force operating which is not destructive but constructive. While the flesh is truly decaying and old mortality is getting us all, the Christian’s spirit is being renewed, expanded — provided — the energy of the body is being expended for Christ and the work of His Kingdom. Then it is being transformed into the energy of the living spirit.

We see this same process in the natural world. Physical energy is constantly being transformed into higher forms. The lowly, colorless chemicals of the soil are being transformed by the light of the sun into beautiful flowers. Flowing waters of rivers are taken up into turbines and transformed into electricity to light and to heat our homes.

The physical strength of the body is gradually running down. It may be expended in futile living or even poured out in self-indulgence, in which case it is lost, gone. On the other hand, it may be dedicated to God and poured into the channels of His purposes, so that the spirit grows day by day in Christlikeness. Physical energy is thus transformed into the beauty and power of the spirit, until the death of the body results in the full release of the spirit.

It was said of a missionary saint’s death in Africa that “he had drunk so deeply of God’s wine of joy . . . that it kept him going at high pressure right to the end . . . He had only died into glory, the stars die at sunrise.”  How clearly this congregation saw this same process in the long and dedicated life and death of John Millard.

Now the second contrast, in which St. Paul sets the restlessness of the soul so we may understand it better, is the contrast of the very real troubles of this life and the over-balancing weight of the Christian’s glory. Hear his words again: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

As Paul does not deny the fact of mortality, or the creeping decrepitude of the body, or the brutal reality of death; neither does he try to disguise trouble as blessings or hardships as opportunities.

Paul speaks of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross as of one piece with the agony that he, Paul, endures as he goes about his Christian life of service every day, “bearing about in his own body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” Paul realized that his suffering and hardships were a kind of death. But death is more than physical decay. Its meaning depends on the purpose it serves.

Jesus’ outlook on His own death is expressed in His words before He endured the cross: “Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.”

Because of his union with Christ, Paul saw something of the same process at work in his own life, suffering and dying. So, Samuel Rutherford, the Scottish mystic-saint said: “What do we have our life and strength for, but to pour them out unto the Lord? What is a candle for, but to be burned? . . . He that takes up the bitter tree of the cross and carries it quietly will find it such a burden as wings are to a bird or sails are to a boat.”

But it is not victory of our own spirit over the frail and afflicted body. Oh, no. It is the life from above that has already taken us up into life itself. It is the invasion of the Spirit of God, enabling us to triumph in Christ through making us captive to His love. His grasp of us, not our hold on Him, is our final invincible assurance.

The third contrast in which St. Paul sets our thinking upon the problem of our restless soul, is the contrast between the temporary tent of this earthly body and the permanent building in the resurrection body we shall be given.

Hear St. Paul’s words: “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Paul was a tentmaker, you will remember. He knew how fragile and perishable the best tents he ever made would always be. This earthly body, compared with the heavenly, spiritual body, is like a piece of wind-ripped canvas stretched on wooden poles, cracked and worm-eaten, compared to a solid stone-brick house.

Here on earth we are camping out. We are as the Psalmist put it: “Pilgrims and sojourners here, as all our fathers were.” Like Abraham and all the heroes of faith, we find no lasting rest here. We seek a better country, where the soul of man will be at home.

So the restlessness of the soul is, in this one sense at least, wholesome and to be expected. Because we are spiritual beings, this earth can never be home in any true sense of the word.

So, we see, there is a restlessness of our spirits which comes of our mortality. Our bodies perish. Let us understand this and acknowledge it, but let us also understand the renewing and expanding power of the inner person which is the work of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit and which gives inner serenity.

Then, there is that restlessness of the human spirit caused by trouble, adversity, suffering. Let us understand this and acknowledge its cruel reality. But let us also understand the redemptive power of suffering for the man or woman in Christ and the greater weight of eternal glory it produces.

But ultimately, there is a restlessness of the spirit always in this body of ours, over and above the horror of the decaying flesh, and the troubles of this earthly life. It is a restlessness which is part of our salvation, for it keeps nudging us on to remind us that we can never be completely at home in this world. It is the restlessness of the land-locked sailor for the open sea, of the caged lion, of the banished patriot, of the homing pigeon, which must remain restless ‘till it finds its way home.