Wisdom Gained in Melancholy (Part 2)

Anger is another element that contributes to our gloom. Much has been written about the effect of rage, resentment, mistrust, hate, and suspicion on our peace of mind. All create unrest and depression.

Anger grows out of disappointment and hurt when our needs are not met. Our hurt becomes rage and resentment and then revenge—the desire to hurt
back. There is no peace that way. The anger turns inward on us and crumples our souls. The inevitable result is depression.

Again, recovery means dying. It’s a matter of letting go of self-will, of letting God do what He has purposed to do. It does not say, “Give me my
rights!” but rather, “Lord, give me nothing but what You want”—like Isaac lying passively in the arms of his father, Abraham; like Mary consenting to
her humiliation (“Let it be unto me according to Your will”); like David acquiescing
in his pain (“Let Him do to me what seems best to Him”).

Then there is a guilt, that still, small voice that makes us feel still smaller. What’s the cure? To try to do better? No, this will only make us worse. The
best thing for us is to do what God has been doing all along and forgive our ungodly selves. In a way it involves another kind of dying—putting to death
our efforts to justify ourselves and purge our own consciences from sin.

Jesus defended His preoccupation with tax collectors and sinners by saying that He had not come to save the healthy but the sick. Of course we’re sick
and sinful; of course we’ve gone wrong. Yet we’re forgiven. “Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6).

Our Lord’s death, in which we participate by faith, was a death to sin. He paid sin’s penalty on the cross and rose again to new life. “The death he died,
he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God” (Romans 6:10).

Because we are identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, we too have new life. “The old has gone; the new has come!” (2 Corinthians
5:17). The old “sin question” has been settled. We will sin, but we are free from sin’s consequences—its guilt, pollution, humiliation, and bondage.

There will always be acts to regret, apologies to make, mistakes that can never be corrected. There is, however, “no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), which means, among other things, that God does more than rid us of the feelings of guilt; he rids us of guilt itself!

We don’t have to grieve any longer for anything we’ve said or done; we do not have to wallow in self-pity. We can confess our sins and move on.

At times it’s hard for me to get that forgiveness out of my head and into my heart. The only way I know is to ask for it. Prayer is the means by which we
translate truth into reality. There is no other way.

Loss, anger, and guilt all result in sorrow, but it seems to me there may be another element that contributes to it—one not understood by once-born
men and women. It may be that our heartache is nothing more than homesickness.

Broken homes, broken relationships, broken promises, broken bodies all remind us that this world is not our home. Heaven lies ahead, and there will
always be some sorrow in us until we get there. Then (and only then) will God “wipe every tear from [our] eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

Finally, it has come to me in recent years that our dark moods, for all their aching discomfort, are in fact a grace disguised, for, whatever their cause,
they can become the means by which God draws us into prayer and contemplation and thus into deep understanding. Blue is “staid wisdom’s hue.”

It’s best to accept our gloom when it arrives, for steadfastly borne it can push us closer to God and give us more of the wisdom that comes from
above.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.