"I wish I could leave all this tangle, this perplexity about money, this need for struggle." - this was a remark made by a tired and harrassed business man in conversation with a friend. Author John R. Gunn comments, "I suppose most of us have experienced this feeling at one time or another. It was a feeling akin to this that possessed David, the king of the ancient Hebrews. David had been having a lot of trouble; feeling pained and oppressed under the load of his burdens and many responsibilities. He uttered the cry, 'O that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest.'
There are times when we wish we could get away from our cares and problems and certainly an occasional vacation from our routine duties is essential to renew, strengthen, refresh us. But we find true rest only in the place of duty, never by fleeing from it."
An old writer said about this wish of the psalmist - "David should have been praying for the strength of an ox to bear his trouble, not for the wings of a dove to flee away from it." The necessity for courage, for action, for work, for struggle, is something from which none of us can escape. If we are to play our part in the world, the only manly thing to do is to face our responsibilities; even if we could flee to the wilderness, as David longed to do, we would find no rest there. Each of us must stick to his post of duty. In no other way can we find real satisfaction and peace.