Depression is a dreadful condition, often made worse for those who suffer from it by the high spirits of those who don’t. While reading Psalm 77 recently, I saw just how isolated a depressed person can feel.
“My soul refused to be comforted.” (Verse 2) What can be said to depressed people to make them feel better? Very little. The First Law of Holes is that when you are in one, stop digging!
Those who don’t suffer from depression may find it hard to understand those who do.
The psalmist speaks of his sleeplessness, and of his inability to put into words how alienated from God and from people he feels. (Verse 4) Remembering a time when he was so elated that he could sing through the darkest times makes him even gloomier. (Verse 6)
In his depressed state, he asks himself six questions: Will the Lord reject me forever? Will He never again be favourable? Is His loving-kindness gone forever? Has His promise failed? Has He forgotten to be kind to the undeserving? Has He slammed the door to His love in anger?
“This is my affliction,” he says. Or as the Living Bible puts it: “This is my fate, that the blessings of God have turned to hate.” The God who once loved him so much seems to love him no more, and His wonderful works are but dim, distant memories.
“Your way O God is in the sanctuary” he says, knowing that in the presence of God, understanding comes. (Psalm 73:17)
Then suddenly he remembers the marvellous moment when the Lord parted the Red Sea, opening the way to freedom for His people. (Verses 16-18) His questions forgotten, he describes, in graphic poetic imagery, the dramatic Red Sea crossing – the flashing lightning, the deafening thunderclaps, and the stormy billows folded back! God’s way is in the sea, as well as in the sanctuary, as much in noisy upheavals as in quiet reflection.
The God who bends the elements to His will has broken into his thoughts and rolled back the depression.
Suddenly the psalm is all but over. Many bible commentators wonder why it ends abruptly; but the final, pastoral scene is appropriate – a relief from the storm of God’s wrath, now over.
“You led your people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”
An anticlimax? I don’t think so. Not if you can see the Red Sea softly lapping on the shore, and the people of God, their bondage well behind them, being led peacefully towards the Promised Land. I hope that the psalmist, having experienced his own marvellous moment, enjoyed God’s peace thereafter.
Call to mind the time when Jesus first entered your life. Meditate on it, until you experience your own marvellous moment; and I very much pray that elation, rather than depression, will be your lot in life,