Depression.
Not a topic that is comfortable in any context, but especially within the church today. So many teach and/or believe that once you have surrendered your life to Christ that life will be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere. As with Job’s friends, when someone does not fit that mold, many question the individual’s walk with Christ; accusations flow and fingers point, but how many harbor their own pain, hiding it to prevent others from treating them in the same way?
Thankfully I am in a fellowship whose members do “…come alongside…” the person who is hurting, from whatever source. Still, it is hard to ask for help; when I see others in the body at the Chapel Hill Bible Church who are wrestling with much worse, how can I ask for help when they seem so much more in need of that help? Indeed, one of the men I would go to for counselling is himself struggling with a battle with cancer; what is depression when compared with something that could take his life?
As I related in an earlier blog, with Job I can state categorically that I do know that my Redeemer lives; that He holds onto me is a solace and comfort that is beyond measure particularly now that my strength is all but gone.
A day is coming for all of us in Christ when such pain and confusion will be forever banished; for now, we do struggle and wander in a dark world. I have no answers or expectation of when (if?) this greyness will end, but I do know that I am loved and, as Elisabeth Elliot quoted so many times, “…underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 32:27)
Not a topic that is comfortable in any context, but especially within the church today. So many teach and/or believe that once you have surrendered your life to Christ that life will be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere. As with Job’s friends, when someone does not fit that mold, many question the individual’s walk with Christ; accusations flow and fingers point, but how many harbor their own pain, hiding it to prevent others from treating them in the same way?
Thankfully I am in a fellowship whose members do “…come alongside…” the person who is hurting, from whatever source. Still, it is hard to ask for help; when I see others in the body at the Chapel Hill Bible Church who are wrestling with much worse, how can I ask for help when they seem so much more in need of that help? Indeed, one of the men I would go to for counselling is himself struggling with a battle with cancer; what is depression when compared with something that could take his life?
As I related in an earlier blog, with Job I can state categorically that I do know that my Redeemer lives; that He holds onto me is a solace and comfort that is beyond measure particularly now that my strength is all but gone.
A day is coming for all of us in Christ when such pain and confusion will be forever banished; for now, we do struggle and wander in a dark world. I have no answers or expectation of when (if?) this greyness will end, but I do know that I am loved and, as Elisabeth Elliot quoted so many times, “…underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 32:27)
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