Hope Part 2

"God doesn’t love us because of our worth, we are of worth because God loves us." (Martin Luther)

I wanted to follow up on the last post with a couple of others thoughts regarding depression and our ultimate hope as children of God. I was told the other day that Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, had once said that you can't be an authentic Christian and struggle with depression. Now, I am not sure in what context those comments were made but on the surface they appear horribly misguided. I know of several Christians, myself included, who have struggled and currently struggle with depression. According to John Piper, none other than G.K. Chesterton, struggled with depression during different parts of his life. But I think there is one very good reason why Christians SHOULD experience some level or some season of depression.

The following is an excerpt from John Eldredge's Desire:

"All good things come to an end." I hate that phrase. It's a lie. Even our troubles and our heartbreaks tell us something about our true destiny. The tragedies that strike us to the core and elicit the cry "this isn't the way it was supposed to be!" are also telling the truth - it isn't the way it was supposed to be. And so Pascal writes,

Man is so great that his greatness appears even in knowing himself to be miserable. A tree has no sense of its misery. It is true that to know we are miserable is to be miserable; but to know we are miserable is also to be great. Thus all the miseries of man prove his grandeur; they are the miseries of a dignified personage, the miseries of a dethroned monarch?What can this incessant craving, and this impotence of attainment mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with everything within his reach?

Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there? Should he not seek his own country? His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. And so let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain - money, position, the approval of others, or just to get away from the discontent itself - its not worth it. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (Matt 16:26).