The Light of Depression

4 But you are not in darkness . . . 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ – 1Thessalonians 5:4-9

Even the most blaring of lights can so easily be extinguished in a moment. Seasons of life have a way of turning down its radiant glare leaving us blindly grabbing for hope, seeking light.

I am aware of four members of my family who found this search too difficult. Suicide is not for the cowardly as much as for the exhausted. The burden of life becomes too much, proper coping skills are often just as lost or rendered ineffective in lieu of this blinding darkness. This is the world I was brought into. While most of us have difficult family dynamics, there appears to be those who have been dealt a more overcast hand. Regardless of the circumstances, the darkness is always present.

The light of God is a difficult thing. While warming us with its healing glow, it also exposes the dark pockets still there. It’s hard to shake. It becomes such a formidable part of you that it in many ways is you. The flare for melancholy will always be present, whether in darkness or light. I never picked to let it have such a pull in me and many times wish it was different. Yet, how can I hate the part of me that led me to Christ? It is funny how a man’s view on life intensifies his thoughts of death and the afterlife.

Jesus is the healing for the bruised and battered. Pray for extra light today.