On Being a Sourpuss

Asaph confesses in Psalm 73 that when he brooded over the prosperity of the wicked and the injustices around him, his heart “became sour,” and in Moffatt’s vivid rendering he became “a dull, stupid creature, no better than a brute” before God. His bitterness accomplished nothing it did not change the ungodly, nor correct their wrongs; it only corrupted his own spirit and distanced him from the Lord, for “they that are far from thee shall perish.” As an old pastor once put it, “There is no such thing as a sour saint.” Whatever the cause of our resentment family wounds, workplace injustices, fellow believers’ failures bitterness never produces righteousness; it only poisons the one who harbors it. The searching question remains: have we become sourpusses in our homes, our churches, and before the Lord, forgetting that sourness undermines godliness and estranges us from the very One we claim to serve?