A Continual Feast

All the days of the afflicted are evil:
But he that is of a merry heart hath
a Continual feast.
Proverbs 15:15

Do we realize how much Proverbs applies to our everyday lives. It’s easy to read a proverb every day, one for each day of the month. But sometimes it can become monotonous and we just skim the page out of duty and familiarity. (or maybe that just me) So I take a break from them every now and then, so that it becomes a little “fresher” the next time I read it.
I’ve been reading there this month and this verse stuck out today. Because of my latest bout of sickness and recovery I guess it took on a new light.
When you are afflicted with sickness, you tend to look at each day as another struggle, another day to “take it easy” and rest. Let me tell you, I got /am so sick of resting. Yeah, it’s nice to have a day or two to be lazy because you are sick, but after almost 4 weeks of it, your days seem to become evil. O.k., we should look at every day and say I’m going to have a great day today but when you wake up, still sick, you think “will these awful days ever go away?” Or maybe that’s just my carnality again…
So I looked up a merry heart in the concordance. Merry means good, a good thing. So the verse speaks of a good heart. The word heart is the feelings, will and intellect. I looked up intellect in the dictionary (yes, we know it but do we really know it?) Intellect is your ability to reason, think and understand.
The heart doesn’t exist on it’s own, it’s located in a body, and obviously we are talking of a human. So, here is my conclusion: (Suddenly I feel like a scientist)
The human that sets his mind up to have a merry heart, one that purposes to be good, despite feelings, self-will, and often out-of-whack intellect, is going to be a human with a feast. No, not turkey, stuffing and the like. Every day is a feast, one full of God’s mercy, love and grace on us. That person purposes in their heart: “I’m going to feast on this day, because God will help me control my heart and mind.” So despite the sickness and affliction in our life, we must purpose to have a merry heart and make every day a feast day.