Living With The Bats

The last type of bat that I want to talk about is the Vampire Bat. Vampire bats do not bite into an artery and suck the blood out like we hear about all the time. They cut or scratch their victims and then lick off the blood. Either way, they can be deadly.

How many two legged vampire bats have you seen? They are the people who will take the life out of anything. If you try to do a work for the Lord, they will throw a wet blanket on your dreams and tell you that you can’t do it. If you try to get a better job, they will tell you that you just better be happy with the one you have. No matter what goes on, they suck the life out of it through their negativity.

I don’t like hanging out with negative people. I like people who have a dream, have a vision and are looking for the best in everything. Life is just too short and too important to spend it thinking about the worst of everything all the time.

I can imagine that there were a few of these “bats” hanging out around David too. It’s no wonder that David was driven to the depths of depression with all these bats hanging out and circling around him. It was bad enough for him to be in depression already without these people adding to his troubles.

The last two things that I want to say about bats are these:

Although the bat is not blind, its eyes are best adapted to seeing in the dark - like bats, most of the people that I have just described love to dwell on the dark side. Whenever things are looking bright for everyone else, they retreat into their own dark shell where the light can’t reach them.

If you want to come out of depression, you have to get out of the shadows and start looking toward the Son – the Son of God.

Another thing about bats is that they can only see in black-and-white. So many people, when they get into a state of depression can’t see how it will ever end and so they give up under the circumstances and dwell in that low state for a while.

We must live by the eyes of faith that can see far above where we are now. We must see with the eyes of the Spirit to know that all things will work out to our good.

We have to lift up our eyes to the hills, look up to Jesus and force ourselves to trust and believe in Him and remember that, “this too shall pass.”

And so we see David, in depression, surrounded by bats, both winged and those with two legs. It is at this point that David begins to sing his song to God in the form of a Maschil (pronounced “mas keel”) – a prayer that David prayed as a form of instruction. It is called a “Didactic poem or prayer”. In Greek, that word “Didactic” means “to teach” and so this prayer and poem of David is given in Psalms to teach God’s precepts and it contains doctrines, principles or rules that we should learn and live by; and it is intended to instruct us in the ways of the Lord.

David, by example, is teaching us how to get into a depression, stay in a depression and then, finally, how to come out of a depression. He looked around and there was no man to care and no man to help him. He felt alone in the crowd and helpless. There was only one way to look to get out of that cave.