From dark depression to brilliant hope
Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:
What did I like about today’s passage?
These songs by “Sons Of Korah” (great name for a metal band!) are raw, honest, epic and glorious. Psalms 42 and 43 were my companions through teenage depression. What I loved about them most was how they could meet someone like me at my lowest points and lift my eyes to a source of hope. “I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.” And I did.
Right now as we are all stressed, and either we or our neighbours could really use some more hope, I’ve heard questioning of how anyone could believe in God when suffering is having its time. “Where is your God?”, essentially, asked one caller today on national radio.
We don’t have easy answers to this. There is danger for any of us who think we can wrap up a neat answer to explain why people suffer, and we’ll look at that from tomorrow in the book of Job. We don’t yet understand as much as we think we do.
But we have hope, and it’s more than an idea. Hope for us is substantial, material and spiritual. It can change us, and through us, God can change the world around us. Psalm 45 contrasts strongly with the darker Psalms before it. Out of darkness, we are bound for glory.
What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
I’m reminded at Easter that God is not remote from our suffering. Jesus chose to suffer for us and experience pain and darkness beyond anything we know. Full of goodness, faith and hope as he died, the words of Psalms 42 to 44 could have foreshadowed Jesus, his pain, his unjust treatment, rejection and death. Was that the end?
Of course not. Happy Easter! We’re celebrating his resurrection today, his defeat of death. But for what purpose? Jesus did not endure the cross just to show us what one person could do. He did it so that he could bring us with him through the darkness and into life’s light.
Psalm 45 describes a royal wedding. It was probably used at many bright, hopeful gatherings, but we know that Israel’s greatest hope was in a messiah we know as Jesus. We also know that Jesus takes us, the church, as his bride. Is this our wedding song too?
What am I going to do differently as a result?
I need to remember from this that it’s OK to be real with God, even if that reality is downright depressing. God does not need us to pretend to be happy. He loves us. He is committed to relationship with us for the long term. So I want to grow in my expression of real feelings in worship, as well as commit myself as firmly as these writers to hope in God.
Who am I going to share this with?
People I talk about songwriting with. It feels too busy to write now, but if not now, when?