Blowing Away The Clouds Of Depression
Bible Study
A Psalm for Every Sigh
Finding Your Song in God's Word
Object:
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?
-- Psalm 42:2
The United States is the birthplace of the blues. Guitar-wielding singers like Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, and Muddy Waters sing their despair. "Don't nobody love me but my mama, and she might be jivin' me!"
Actually, the oldest form of the blues is not from America, but from the Middle East. The psalms of the Old Testament were written several thousand years ago. And fully fifty, or one third, of the psalms take the form of lament.
Psalm 42 is one such blues psalm. It is a psalm of depression. Let's open ourselves to it and see what light there is for the living of our days.
What Is Depression?
In the psalm, the singer laments, "As a deer pants for the flowing streams, so my soul longs after thee, O God." This "longing" is further detailed as a sense of "thirst," being "cast down," "disquieted within."
Health experts call depression a misery that may include feeling blue, down in the dumps, grumpiness, sadness, fatigue, cope-lessness, and a feeling of dejection.
In Herman Melville's book, Moby Dick, depression is called "a damp, drizzly November in the soul." A friend of mine describes his depression as "one of those days when you get up but can't get your closet started, one of those moments when your shoelaces seem to weigh forty pounds each."
In a Peanuts comic strip, Lucy has hung out her "the psychiatrist is in" sign. Charlie Brown confides, "Some days I'm up, the next day I'm down." Lucy replies, "Like an emotional roller coaster?" To which Charlie Brown responds, "No." More like the bumper cars!" Most of us can relate to getting bumped around by the hurts of life.
What is depression? It's a feeling, an emotional experience of varying intensity, that may include sadness, listlessness, dejection, and hopelessness.
What Are The Symptoms?
The psalmist is very honest. In only eleven verses he describes himself as full of longing, thirst, weeping night and day, soul cast down, disquieted within, suffocating beneath the waves, feeling forgotten, mourning, and bearing about in his person a deadly wound. My! What an eloquent expression of the blues!
Health care experts give ten major symptoms of depression:
* unexplained jumpiness or anxiety;
* unusual irritability;
* sleep disturbances;
* difficulty in concentrating or remembering;
* physical pains that are hard to pin down;
* appetite loss or overeating;
* loss of interest in job, family, sex, hobby;
* a downhearted period that gets worse or just won't go away;
* frequent unexplainable crying spells; and
* a loss of self-esteem or an attitude of indifference.
If you discover three to five of these symptoms in your life at any one time, in every likelihood you're suffering depression. That's okay -- it's no sin to be downhearted. Rather, it's all a portion of what Shakespeare's Hamlet called, "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ... that flesh is heir to."
In the Bible, some spiritual heavyweights spent time in the doldrums. Three major prophets hurt so badly they wished for death: Moses, Elijah, and Jonah -- so, you're in good company!
What Causes Depression?
Many things cause depression.
Fatigue. If I run ten miles, I become physically tired. Likewise, each of us has a tank of emotional fuel. When it is spent, I may feel blue.
Certain events in life guzzle lots of emotional energy -- difficult people, rapid change, family weddings and funerals, making a speech, rejection, and the like.
Take Elijah, for example. He dueled with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, slew their priests, had his life threatened by wicked Queen Jezebel, and fled into the wilderness emotionally drained. "I, only I, am left ..." he lamented.
Circumstances. A friend of mine moved against her wishes to a huge city in another part of the country. Everything was strange, her network of friends was far away, and she was feeling blue. Depression in her case was circumstantial. She's using her emotional energy to deal with change.
Nutrition. Junk food diets can lead to a junky emotional life. Today's American eats in a hurry and swills down pills and alcohol. Truman Capote, in one of his last interviews, showed up depressed, haggard looking, with his speech slurred. He confessed he hadn't slept in three days, and he had quit eating. He said he was given to mixing his pills and alcohol and drinking it as a sort of cocktail -- and he was blue. Little wonder!
Biological Depression. The human body is a delicate machine and sometimes it gets out of sync. The thyroid gland can act up. There is the feminine change of life. Chemistry can become unbalanced, causing mood swings.
A Bitter Spirit. Jesus said unforgivingness turns us over to torment (Matthew 18:34). One of the worst things we can do is hate. Such creates an emotional focus wherein we eat, sleep, drink, and wrestle with our hated adversary over and over until we're thoroughly sapped by it.
A Negative Attitude. I stayed on a campus after a chapel service recently. The student who hosted me was a freshman. "How do you like it so far?" I inquired. Thus began his litany of gripes -- too small, boring classes, nothing to do, no cool girls, and the dining hall food is lousy. When I asked the young man where he'd rather be, he didn't know. No wonder the student was depressed! His thoughts were an anvil about his neck.
Grief. At different times in our lives, we suffer loss. A romantic breakup, job loss, a child leaves the nest, a pet dies, divorce, estrangement from a friend, a spouse passes away ... such can lead to depression.
Sin. Facing the consequences of poor choices, carnality, quenching the Spirit, a bad conscience, failure to combat the accusations of Satan, wallowing in sin -- these can depress us.
If I go hiking, I like to carry a light pack. Who'd ever think of toting a forty-pound rock around in his knapsack? Yet, sin is weighty! And many of us go through life carrying huge burdens of unconfessed sin. Hebrews 12 goads us to lighten up. "Let us throw aside every weight of sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the great race of faith set before us...."
Spirit. Times of testing come our way, what theologians call "Great Dark Nights of the Soul." Job is an example. Attacked by Satan, tested by God, Job lost his fortune, his family, his health, and his reputation. In agony, he sat on an ash heap languishing.
Behold, I go forward and he is not there. I go backward and I cannot find him. I turn to the right and left and cannot perceive him. But he knows the way I take. And when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold!
-- Job 23:8-10
Indeed, many saints of history have struggled through wilderness experiences -- Wesley, Luther, Elijah, Jonah, J. B. Phillips, and more.
A Mixture. In the language of depression, we speak of "triggers" as events that set off depression. And many depressions are multi-barreled -- they have several triggers.
For instance, at work you are hit with financial reversals and you come home grumpy. This is the last straw for your wife and she packs up and leaves you. Depression sets in. You start eating poorly, suffer insomnia, are so ashamed you avoid your friends, quit going to church, and begin to wallow in Satan's accusations. Suddenly, you find yourself buried under an avalanche of depressive causes.
What Is The Cure?
Once when I was downhearted, I took a walk in the woods with my son. I told him my troubles, of my bleak outlook, and asked what he thought I should do. "Dad," he said, "this is serious. In any case, don't do nothing!"
In the psalm, the blues singer gives us some solid advice in healing depression.
Admit it. "My soul is cast down, disquieted within," he confesses. So many of us fake it. We think the Christian life is all rainbows and mountaintops. Yet, when we're not there, we fake it. Nothing is more pathetic than watching a half-filled Christian trying to overflow.
Express yourself. Don't bottle it up. The psalmist poured out his soul, wept, prayed to God, and talked things over with people.
Many of us, when we get down, throw a pity party and we're the only one invited. We lounge on the sofa, guzzling beer, downing chips and dip by the carload, blearily watching television. "I, only I, am left. Woe is me!"
Not the psalmist! He honestly vents his feelings to God and to helpful people.
Hope. The word is used several times in the text. Hope is enjoying the things of God's tomorrow today.
Note how the psalmist is not allowing his thoughts to drift aimlessly like lint in the wind. He directs his thoughts. He gives himself an order, "Hope in God!"
"Yes, things are bad now. But not forever! I have a wonderful Savior. He's in full control. Nothing happens to me that doesn't first come by God's permissive will. If he has allowed it, it is for some good. And I will trust all this to him and wait hopefully."
Praise. This word is used twice in the psalm. It means "to ascribe worth to God."
Many ministers experience "Blue Mondays." We can get really wrung out on a Lord's day preaching. I know I sleep a little later, get feeling sorry for myself, and mope about. Then I catch myself ascribing too much worth to people and circumstances. I'm gazing at people while only glancing at God.
Physical labor and exercise. In verse 4, the singer mentions going with the throng on a long walk up to Jerusalem's temple. In physical education, we call this "recreation." Re-creation -- nothing relaxes or re-creates us like yard work, horseback riding, or an art event. It's a smart person who learns what works for him.
Memory. "These things I remember" (v. 4). The psalmist breathes, thinking of the light of better days. Again, he's arresting his thoughts, taking charge, and practicing positive thinking.
Each of us has in our memory videos of the perfect day skiing, a candlelight supper (oh, so romantic), or a fishing trip. The confidence of such past days can bolster us to face the days ahead with poise.
Accepting relapses. When one first meets the lamenter of Psalm 42, he is down, but as the psalm progresses, he improves. Then suddenly, he succumbs to a relapse. In verse 7 just as he gets his head above water, another wave comes crashing over him.
I've known some victims of depression who have been healed in a moment. But most whom I know are healed by process. And it is usually three steps forward and two steps backward.
Following are some helpful insights in curing depression that go beyond the scope of this particular psalm.
* Look to your nutrition. The book of Leviticus is a study of nutrition. So, evidently the good Lord is concerned with our eating habits.
* Are you practicing forgiveness?
* Have you come to know yourself? What triggers your depression? What allows you emotional rest?
* Recognize the healing therapy of service. A woman struggling with the postpartum blues wallowed in the emotional doldrums over her lost figure, being up all night with a sick child, and instant full-time responsibility. For two years, the blues lasted. It lifted when she and her baby started going around to rest homes ministering to the elderly, some of whom hadn't held a baby in decades.
* There's plenty more, but neither the psalmist nor I have the expertise. Even the best of doctors will confess depression to be mysterious.
Conclusion
Thirty million Americans suffer from depression right now -- that's one in nine.
Five percent of us are struggling with a major depression at any given time; 25% of us will do so at one time in our lives.
What the psalmist is saying needs to be heard. You are not alone. Others have been there before you. There is help. God can meet you where you are and still bring a blessing to and from your life!
Winston Churchill called depression, "A black dog that follows me about." Abe Lincoln suffered from severe, debilitating bouts of depression. So did George Friedrick Handel, the composer; Vincent van Gogh, the artist; Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut; Robert E. Lee, the general; Marilyn Monroe, the actress; and the sweet psalmist from Israel.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that God cares. So do his people. Reach out for help and let the healing process begin!
Suggested Prayer
Lord, you know. You know! You also care. Thank you. Help me to clasp my hand in thine! For Jesus' sake. Amen.
-- Psalm 42:2
The United States is the birthplace of the blues. Guitar-wielding singers like Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, and Muddy Waters sing their despair. "Don't nobody love me but my mama, and she might be jivin' me!"
Actually, the oldest form of the blues is not from America, but from the Middle East. The psalms of the Old Testament were written several thousand years ago. And fully fifty, or one third, of the psalms take the form of lament.
Psalm 42 is one such blues psalm. It is a psalm of depression. Let's open ourselves to it and see what light there is for the living of our days.
What Is Depression?
In the psalm, the singer laments, "As a deer pants for the flowing streams, so my soul longs after thee, O God." This "longing" is further detailed as a sense of "thirst," being "cast down," "disquieted within."
Health experts call depression a misery that may include feeling blue, down in the dumps, grumpiness, sadness, fatigue, cope-lessness, and a feeling of dejection.
In Herman Melville's book, Moby Dick, depression is called "a damp, drizzly November in the soul." A friend of mine describes his depression as "one of those days when you get up but can't get your closet started, one of those moments when your shoelaces seem to weigh forty pounds each."
In a Peanuts comic strip, Lucy has hung out her "the psychiatrist is in" sign. Charlie Brown confides, "Some days I'm up, the next day I'm down." Lucy replies, "Like an emotional roller coaster?" To which Charlie Brown responds, "No." More like the bumper cars!" Most of us can relate to getting bumped around by the hurts of life.
What is depression? It's a feeling, an emotional experience of varying intensity, that may include sadness, listlessness, dejection, and hopelessness.
What Are The Symptoms?
The psalmist is very honest. In only eleven verses he describes himself as full of longing, thirst, weeping night and day, soul cast down, disquieted within, suffocating beneath the waves, feeling forgotten, mourning, and bearing about in his person a deadly wound. My! What an eloquent expression of the blues!
Health care experts give ten major symptoms of depression:
* unexplained jumpiness or anxiety;
* unusual irritability;
* sleep disturbances;
* difficulty in concentrating or remembering;
* physical pains that are hard to pin down;
* appetite loss or overeating;
* loss of interest in job, family, sex, hobby;
* a downhearted period that gets worse or just won't go away;
* frequent unexplainable crying spells; and
* a loss of self-esteem or an attitude of indifference.
If you discover three to five of these symptoms in your life at any one time, in every likelihood you're suffering depression. That's okay -- it's no sin to be downhearted. Rather, it's all a portion of what Shakespeare's Hamlet called, "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ... that flesh is heir to."
In the Bible, some spiritual heavyweights spent time in the doldrums. Three major prophets hurt so badly they wished for death: Moses, Elijah, and Jonah -- so, you're in good company!
What Causes Depression?
Many things cause depression.
Fatigue. If I run ten miles, I become physically tired. Likewise, each of us has a tank of emotional fuel. When it is spent, I may feel blue.
Certain events in life guzzle lots of emotional energy -- difficult people, rapid change, family weddings and funerals, making a speech, rejection, and the like.
Take Elijah, for example. He dueled with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, slew their priests, had his life threatened by wicked Queen Jezebel, and fled into the wilderness emotionally drained. "I, only I, am left ..." he lamented.
Circumstances. A friend of mine moved against her wishes to a huge city in another part of the country. Everything was strange, her network of friends was far away, and she was feeling blue. Depression in her case was circumstantial. She's using her emotional energy to deal with change.
Nutrition. Junk food diets can lead to a junky emotional life. Today's American eats in a hurry and swills down pills and alcohol. Truman Capote, in one of his last interviews, showed up depressed, haggard looking, with his speech slurred. He confessed he hadn't slept in three days, and he had quit eating. He said he was given to mixing his pills and alcohol and drinking it as a sort of cocktail -- and he was blue. Little wonder!
Biological Depression. The human body is a delicate machine and sometimes it gets out of sync. The thyroid gland can act up. There is the feminine change of life. Chemistry can become unbalanced, causing mood swings.
A Bitter Spirit. Jesus said unforgivingness turns us over to torment (Matthew 18:34). One of the worst things we can do is hate. Such creates an emotional focus wherein we eat, sleep, drink, and wrestle with our hated adversary over and over until we're thoroughly sapped by it.
A Negative Attitude. I stayed on a campus after a chapel service recently. The student who hosted me was a freshman. "How do you like it so far?" I inquired. Thus began his litany of gripes -- too small, boring classes, nothing to do, no cool girls, and the dining hall food is lousy. When I asked the young man where he'd rather be, he didn't know. No wonder the student was depressed! His thoughts were an anvil about his neck.
Grief. At different times in our lives, we suffer loss. A romantic breakup, job loss, a child leaves the nest, a pet dies, divorce, estrangement from a friend, a spouse passes away ... such can lead to depression.
Sin. Facing the consequences of poor choices, carnality, quenching the Spirit, a bad conscience, failure to combat the accusations of Satan, wallowing in sin -- these can depress us.
If I go hiking, I like to carry a light pack. Who'd ever think of toting a forty-pound rock around in his knapsack? Yet, sin is weighty! And many of us go through life carrying huge burdens of unconfessed sin. Hebrews 12 goads us to lighten up. "Let us throw aside every weight of sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the great race of faith set before us...."
Spirit. Times of testing come our way, what theologians call "Great Dark Nights of the Soul." Job is an example. Attacked by Satan, tested by God, Job lost his fortune, his family, his health, and his reputation. In agony, he sat on an ash heap languishing.
Behold, I go forward and he is not there. I go backward and I cannot find him. I turn to the right and left and cannot perceive him. But he knows the way I take. And when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold!
-- Job 23:8-10
Indeed, many saints of history have struggled through wilderness experiences -- Wesley, Luther, Elijah, Jonah, J. B. Phillips, and more.
A Mixture. In the language of depression, we speak of "triggers" as events that set off depression. And many depressions are multi-barreled -- they have several triggers.
For instance, at work you are hit with financial reversals and you come home grumpy. This is the last straw for your wife and she packs up and leaves you. Depression sets in. You start eating poorly, suffer insomnia, are so ashamed you avoid your friends, quit going to church, and begin to wallow in Satan's accusations. Suddenly, you find yourself buried under an avalanche of depressive causes.
What Is The Cure?
Once when I was downhearted, I took a walk in the woods with my son. I told him my troubles, of my bleak outlook, and asked what he thought I should do. "Dad," he said, "this is serious. In any case, don't do nothing!"
In the psalm, the blues singer gives us some solid advice in healing depression.
Admit it. "My soul is cast down, disquieted within," he confesses. So many of us fake it. We think the Christian life is all rainbows and mountaintops. Yet, when we're not there, we fake it. Nothing is more pathetic than watching a half-filled Christian trying to overflow.
Express yourself. Don't bottle it up. The psalmist poured out his soul, wept, prayed to God, and talked things over with people.
Many of us, when we get down, throw a pity party and we're the only one invited. We lounge on the sofa, guzzling beer, downing chips and dip by the carload, blearily watching television. "I, only I, am left. Woe is me!"
Not the psalmist! He honestly vents his feelings to God and to helpful people.
Hope. The word is used several times in the text. Hope is enjoying the things of God's tomorrow today.
Note how the psalmist is not allowing his thoughts to drift aimlessly like lint in the wind. He directs his thoughts. He gives himself an order, "Hope in God!"
"Yes, things are bad now. But not forever! I have a wonderful Savior. He's in full control. Nothing happens to me that doesn't first come by God's permissive will. If he has allowed it, it is for some good. And I will trust all this to him and wait hopefully."
Praise. This word is used twice in the psalm. It means "to ascribe worth to God."
Many ministers experience "Blue Mondays." We can get really wrung out on a Lord's day preaching. I know I sleep a little later, get feeling sorry for myself, and mope about. Then I catch myself ascribing too much worth to people and circumstances. I'm gazing at people while only glancing at God.
Physical labor and exercise. In verse 4, the singer mentions going with the throng on a long walk up to Jerusalem's temple. In physical education, we call this "recreation." Re-creation -- nothing relaxes or re-creates us like yard work, horseback riding, or an art event. It's a smart person who learns what works for him.
Memory. "These things I remember" (v. 4). The psalmist breathes, thinking of the light of better days. Again, he's arresting his thoughts, taking charge, and practicing positive thinking.
Each of us has in our memory videos of the perfect day skiing, a candlelight supper (oh, so romantic), or a fishing trip. The confidence of such past days can bolster us to face the days ahead with poise.
Accepting relapses. When one first meets the lamenter of Psalm 42, he is down, but as the psalm progresses, he improves. Then suddenly, he succumbs to a relapse. In verse 7 just as he gets his head above water, another wave comes crashing over him.
I've known some victims of depression who have been healed in a moment. But most whom I know are healed by process. And it is usually three steps forward and two steps backward.
Following are some helpful insights in curing depression that go beyond the scope of this particular psalm.
* Look to your nutrition. The book of Leviticus is a study of nutrition. So, evidently the good Lord is concerned with our eating habits.
* Are you practicing forgiveness?
* Have you come to know yourself? What triggers your depression? What allows you emotional rest?
* Recognize the healing therapy of service. A woman struggling with the postpartum blues wallowed in the emotional doldrums over her lost figure, being up all night with a sick child, and instant full-time responsibility. For two years, the blues lasted. It lifted when she and her baby started going around to rest homes ministering to the elderly, some of whom hadn't held a baby in decades.
* There's plenty more, but neither the psalmist nor I have the expertise. Even the best of doctors will confess depression to be mysterious.
Conclusion
Thirty million Americans suffer from depression right now -- that's one in nine.
Five percent of us are struggling with a major depression at any given time; 25% of us will do so at one time in our lives.
What the psalmist is saying needs to be heard. You are not alone. Others have been there before you. There is help. God can meet you where you are and still bring a blessing to and from your life!
Winston Churchill called depression, "A black dog that follows me about." Abe Lincoln suffered from severe, debilitating bouts of depression. So did George Friedrick Handel, the composer; Vincent van Gogh, the artist; Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut; Robert E. Lee, the general; Marilyn Monroe, the actress; and the sweet psalmist from Israel.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that God cares. So do his people. Reach out for help and let the healing process begin!
Suggested Prayer
Lord, you know. You know! You also care. Thank you. Help me to clasp my hand in thine! For Jesus' sake. Amen.
