Our uncomfortable surroundings.
"Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech!" These names Mesech and Kedar are not to be regarded as literally descriptive. They poetically represent the very trying circumstances and associations in which at the lime the psalmist was placed. The Mesech are only known as a half-barbarous people living towards the north, on the mountains south of Caucasus (Ezekiel 38:9,Ezekiel 38:15, Ezekiel 38:16). Kedar is a term representing the warrior-tribes of Arabia far to the south-east (Genesis 25:13; Isaiah 21:17; Ezekiel 27:21). There can be little question that the names are here used typically, because it was not wise to fix in a poem or psalm the actual names of the uncomfortable neighbors.
I. WE CANNOT HELP HAVING UNCOMFORTABLE SURROUNDINGS. It is only in a very small sense that a man can be said to choose his own lot. He cannot choose his parents, brothers and sisters, early home, schooling, and many other things. We speak of his making his way in life, but Providence is always overruling things, and putting men in unexpected places. Most men have to say, in looking back over life, "I never could have dreamed of being where I have been, or of doing what I have done." Our culture largely comes through our life-associations, and we cannot help their sometimes being not at all "according to our mind."
II. WE CANNOT HELP FEELING OUR UNCOMFORTABLE SURROUNDINGS. It is indeed essential to discipline through them that we should feel them. The misery of trying, unlovely, mischievous neighbors is but like the pain of the surgeon who would heal. God wants us to feel, because he wants to use the feeling. Indeed, keenness to feel may help him to do his gracious work.
III. WE CAN HELP BEING MASTERED BY UNCOMFORTABLE SURROUNDINGS. They cannot hurt us unless we allow them to. If feeling is allowed to rule the will, they are sure to master us. If the will be made to rule feeling, they cannot. Just what God's grace does for us is so to strengthen the will that nothing can unduly or unworthily influence us.
IV. WE CAN WIN THE TRIUMPH OF THE GODLY LIFE EVEN AMIDST UNCOMFORTABLE SURROUNDINGS. We can, on the principle of the psalmist, who, out of his distress, persisted in "looking up," crying unto God for help, singing "songs of ascent."—R.T.