Some Psychosomatic Medicine

We sometimes use formidable words to express simple ideas. Consider, for example, the word psychosomatic. While its common use may be relatively recent, its essential idea of the effect of mind over matter, over happiness, over health, is certainly not new. Many centuries ago a man of much wisdom suggested the sense of the subject in a simple scriptural sentence: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…” And then he added: “but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

It is easy to prescribe, but it isn’t always easy to administer the “medicine of a merry heart,” for there is often much to make hearts heavy. There are sorrows; there is sickness; there is sin. There are disappointments, cruelty, unkindness; the loss of loved ones, and loneliness. And if we would, we could easily succumb to the negative side and shut out the sunlight and become darkly depressed. But if we did, we would be overlooking one of life’s chief purposes and ultimate aims, for the pursuit of happiness is one of the rights that is inalienable.

This principle hasn’t always found understanding or acceptance, but if we will look at the essential facts, we shall see that it is basically so: for we are here on earth as children of a loving Father who has blesses us with the privilege of life and with all else that is ours. And surely the purpose of a loving Father for His children would be sincere happiness.

It is true that we sometimes receive (and no doubt sometimes deserve) discipline. It is true that some of us sometimes mar our happiness by our own foolish, strongheaded acts and utterances. And it is true that some of us might sometimes be subject to unhappiness that we don’t seem to need or that we don’t deserve. But these things we shall sometimes understand (as we now understand some of the purposes of our parents which were not so understandable to us in our younger years).

And if we will keep faith: faith that our Father intends peace and progress and sincere, sound happiness for his children; faith in the purposefulness of life, which is limitless and everlasting; faith in the purpose and power of God to give to each of us complete compensation with such faith we can survive the hurts and heartaches, with a “heart that doeth good like a medicine.”