THE GLASSES
Micah Smith
Today's Scripture: "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." Psalm 43:5, ESV
Theme: Even in the face of tremendous loss, pain, and challenge, we cannot fail when we place our faith and hope in God alone.
A MOMENT OF CLARITY
Before James Glaisher ever stepped into a balloon, someone taught him to look up.
James Glaisher was a meteorologist — a scientist obsessed with understanding the weather — at a time when the atmosphere above the clouds was largely a mystery and AccuWeather wasn’t yet a thing. In The Aeronauts, he's the methodical, instrument-checking passenger on a gas balloon flight piloted by Amelia Wren, driven by the belief that going higher than anyone had gone before could unlock something no one yet understood about the sky. Science was his mission. The balloon was his means.
But before any of that, there was his father.
In one of the quieter, more tender scenes of The Aeronauts, James visits his father Arthur and it becomes clear that Arthur's memory is slipping. He drifts in and out of recognizing his own son. James sits with him, hoping for a connection that keeps sliding just out of reach. Eventually, defeated, he begins to leave.
And then Arthur hands him a pair of binoculars.
"Those are the glasses I taught you stargazing with."
Five words through the fog. A sudden moment of clarity that cuts straight through the grief of watching someone disappear in slow motion. The binoculars aren't just an object; they're a thread back to who James is, where he came from, and why he does what he does. In a moment of profound loss, something anchored him.
I'll acknowledge the irony here: talking about anchors in a devotional about a balloon feels a little ironic. But stay with me.
THAT THING
We all have something like those binoculars. Sometimes it's an object — a piece of jewelry, a worn-out book, something that belonged to someone who shaped you. Sometimes it's a phrase someone said to you once that you've never been able to shake. Sometimes it's a place you return to when you need to remember who you are.
These anchors aren't always tied to warm memories either. Sometimes the thing that reminds you of where you came from is painful — a hard season you survived, a loss that changed you, a version of yourself you had to leave behind. But even then, they tether you to something true when everything around you feels unsteady.
The psalmist in Psalm 43 knows this feeling intimately. He's not performing contentment. He's in genuine turmoil. Soul cast down. Circumstances overwhelming. And yet he does something remarkable: he preaches to himself. Why are you cast down, O my soul? He's not asking for information. He's talking himself back to solid ground, reminding himself of what's true when his feelings are telling him something different entirely.
Hope in God. Not as a feeling that he's managed to conjure. As a choice made directly against the current.
Make it Personal: What are your binoculars? What object, phrase, memory, or place anchors you to who you are and who God has called you to be — especially when you're losing the thread? And in the seasons where your soul genuinely feels cast down, are you willing to do what the psalmist did — acknowledge the turmoil honestly, and then preach hope back to yourself anyway?
Pray: Father, thank You for the anchors You've placed in my life — the people, the moments, the memories that tether me to You when I'm losing my footing. On the days when my soul is genuinely cast down, help me do what the psalmist did: name it honestly, and then choose hope anyway. Remind me that hope in You isn't a feeling I have to manufacture — it's a foundation that holds, whether I feel it or not. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
Read: Psalm 43, Lamentations 3:19-24
Weekly Memory Verse: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Hebrews 12:1, ESV