NANU, NANU

The first wall I hit in being a pastor of a local church was brutal.  Some of the folks simply did not like me, or anything about me.  To them I was a pastor bent on scattering the sheep and destroying the church.  To them I was young and wrong.  I didn’t see church the way they saw church so I was received as the evil one.  One of the dear saints, at least all her friends thought she was a saint, told me one day, “Why don’t you go where people think like you think.”  She was a strong believer in holiness and she had clout, so when she and E. F. Hutton spoke people listened. She could rip a person to shreds on Tuesday and then testify on Wednesday night about how wonderful the love of God was.  She and her little band of holy ones, sought to eliminate me and retake the church for Jesus.

It was then that I began to battle depression. It was tough being told “you are of the devil…you are destroying the church…you don’t belong here…you need to leave.”  It was tough knowing that there were some folks who talked among themselves, and with anyone who would listen, who believed I was an annoyance that needed to be removed, that I had no good thing to offer, and that I needed to be removed not only from their church but from being a pastor in any church.  Tougher than all these things, however, was the fact that the attitudes accompanying their beliefs were of anger and hostility and wrath.  The God they said they represented began to repulse me, and the love they said that lived in their hearts in the spirit of holiness began to disgust me. 

In time it all began to wear on me and I could feel the life being drained from me.  Living in a place where no matter what I did, it would not please these folks, I took it all personally, took it deep within, and opened the channels of depression, a condition that is with me even today and one to which I must constantly pay close attention. 

Interestingly enough what saved me during those early days (this would change in time, but it was a gift from God to me at the time) was humor from the life of an alien among us, Mork from Ork, aka, Robin Williams.  A young couple in our church was the owners of one of the early television recording devices and every week they recorded “Mork and Mendy,” and put each recording back to back on Videotapes.  Vonnie and I would go over to their home and watch the show back to back, laughing so hard I could hardly catch my breath at times.  It was salvation to my hurting heart.  Laughter got me through.  I should say that laughter and prayer and fellowship got me through, but at the core of it all, and please don’t be offended if you are profoundly spiritual, it was Mork from Ork that let me breath out the pain growing in me and breath in healing and strength and renewal.

Now, the man who so long ago touched my life in ways he never knew has taken his own life because of a depression over which he could not gain victory.  My heart hurts for a man I didn’t even know.  My heart hurts for a man who touched millions of lives and didn’t even know their names.  My heart hurts for a man who gave himself to help others but in the end could not help himself.

My heart hurts because Robin Williams represents hundreds, if not thousands, of other people who attempted to end their lives on the same day as he ended his, some succeeding and others failing in their attempt.

           

Depression is a wicked enemy, and an equal opportunity destroyer.  Regardless of age, race, gender, socio-economic standing, political viewpoint or religious persuasion, depression sits in the mind and heart of people eating away at the very fiber of their being.

           

People of faith through the ages have struggled with depression, men and women who have profoundly impacted their world for Christ and His kingdom.  In the Scriptures we have Abraham, Jonah, Job, Elijah, and Jeremiah, just to name a few.  St. John of the Cross, Charles Spurgeon, William Cowper, and Ruth Bell Graham, come to mind, also. 

In His Lectures to My Student, Charles Spurgeon wrote

Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon…It is not necessary by quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not all of them.

In 1881 Spurgeon wrote these powerful words, words to which many Christians in the twenty-first century out to give attention,

“I know that wise brethren say, ‘You should not give way to feelings of depression.’ If those who blame quite so furiously could once know what depression is, they would think it cruel to scatter blame where comfort is needed. There are experiences of the children of God which are full of spiritual darkness; and I am almost persuaded that those of God’s servants who have been most highly favoured have, nevertheless, suffered more times of darkness than others. (Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1881, vol. 27, p. 1595 

William Cowper’s story is intriguing.  He struggled with depression and doubt. One night he decided to commit suicide by drowning himself. He called a cab and told the driver to take him to the Thames River. That night, though, a thick fog came down and prevented them from finding the river.  After driving around lost for a while, the cabby finally stopped and let Cowper out. To Cowper’s surprise, he found himself on his own doorstep. For the rest of his life he spoke of how God had sent the fog to keep him from killing himself.

It was William Cowper who gave us the words of a great hymn,

God moves in a mysterious way


His wonders to perform;


He plants His footsteps in the sea


And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines


Of never failing skill
He treasures up

His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;


The clouds ye so much dread


Are big with mercy and shall break


In blessings on your head.

  

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,


But trust Him for His grace;


Behind a frowning providence


He hides a smiling face.

            All across the Internet, since Robin Williams took his life, people have taken to their pulpits and pontificated their understanding of depression.  Many of those people have been Christians.  Many of those Christians don’t know what they’re talking about.  In a moment when followers of Jesus should be “quick to listen [and] slow to speak” (James 1:19), some have chosen to disregard the words of the apostle Paul, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3 NASB).

            It is no time to point fingers or judge hearts and minds and conditions.  It is time to live out the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28, NASB).  It is time to embrace people who are hurting, people who may not understand God as we understand God in Jesus.  It is no time to pretend that Christians are somehow inoculated against the reality of living in a broken world.  It is time to live out the meaning of having been embraced by a love that will not let us go but who loves us so much that in Jesus “He emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race” (Charles Wesley, 1738).  It is time to live out the meaning that God has entered into human history, into the story of our lives, in fact, and brings His own story, a story of healing and restoration and hope. 

    

        At the time of my story shared earlier I was young.  Today, I am old, at the other end of ministry for Christ, knowing that I have more days behind me than I have before me.  What a great journey it has been.  When I was young and trying to sort out people and thinking and ideas, and faced the reality of depression, I hated it.  I hated what I was going through and I hated the awful sense of loneliness and aloneness and exile.  Today, I wouldn’t change my story at all. 

           God was, is, and will be in my story.  In the past, when I could not see Him, He was there.  Today when I cannot see Him, He is here.  Tomorrow, which I cannot yet fathom, He will be there.  What I have suffered has been baptized in God’s grace, and has enabled me to be present with people in ways I could never be present had I not suffered in my own life.  In learning how to come to Jesus, even though the learning took with it great pain and discomfort and bewilderment, I have learned that God is faithful.  When I thought the pain was wasted, God took it to His heart, redeemed it, and took my life, broken though it was, and shaped and formed it to be a witness of His amazing grace.  It is a broken and wounded witness, mind you, but it is a witness because Jesus has taken me to Himself, breathed His breath into me, and, by a grace I do not deserve, filled me with His Holy Spirit.

           I have not arrived and, as Robert Frost wrote, I have “miles to go before I sleep.” I face today and tomorrow because of an embraced pain that was my story.  It was pain embraced by God and, at the time, I didn’t know it.  It didn’t matter, though, because God knew it.  And, because of my story God has invited me to live for and in Him, as a friend to others.  My weakness is the place where God draws near and manifests the incarnational hope of mercy, grace, healing, and restoration.  My weakness, though with me everyday, is not Lord of my life.  Jesus is Lord, and in Him each moment is stamped by the One who so long ago said, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jeremiah 31:3, NASB)

    

        If you know someone who struggles with depression don’t write him or her off.  Draw near to them and be a model of hope.  Don’t judge and oppress them further by laying upon them guilt for daring not to have their lives together.  We live in a world marred by sin and brokenness of a thousand kinds.  Ours is not to play God in the brokenness but to be a fragrant aroma of Christ there.  Never let it be forgotten that Jesus “gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2, NASB). 

  

          Let it always be remembered, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19).  In this light there ought to be very little condemning, if any, and a profound remembering that “God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17).   

           If you are struggling with depression or know someone who is, don’t judge them.  Embrace them in a spirit of reconciliation.  Love them as Jesus has loved you.  Cut them slack as Jesus has cut you a lot of slack.  Show them they are loved, that they, too, are being drawn to life by God’s lovingkindness. 

           Today a man who helped me through a dark night of my soul could not help himself through a dark night of his own soul.  So, I grieve.  I grieve the passing of a man I didn’t even know.  I grieve that one so gifted could live in a deep pain from which he could not find deliverance.  I grieve that there is more room in our broken world for physical illness than there is for mental illness.  I grieve that we live in a world where it is easier to judge than to embrace.    

And, I pray. I pray that God’s grace is bigger than my ability to understand it all. I pray that God’s Church will “be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger” (James 1:19, NASB).  I pray that people who name the name of Jesus will hear and follow the words of Scripture, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).  

The great and well-known reformer, Martin Luther, struggled with depression, great depression.  We don’t know that he was ever delivered from the darkness but we do know that in the darkness He opened up his heart to God, and that God mightily used him to ignite the church into a new way of being.  It was Martin Luther who gave these words to the Church.  Make them your words.

“Feelings come and feelings go,


And feelings are deceiving;


My warrant is the Word of God--


Naught else is worth believing.



Though all my heart should feel condemned


For want of some sweet token,


There is One greater than my heart


Whose Word cannot be broken.



I'll trust in God's unchanging Word


Till soul and body sever,


For, though all things shall pass away,


HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!”

God bless you all, and “Nanu, Nanu.”

CARPE DIEM

Once upon a time there was a young guy who constantly said to himself, “One of these days when….” He had completed the sentence with so many thoughts over the years it was hard to remember them all.  Ironically, it didn’t really matter, though, because the ship seemed never to come in and the thoughts were left dangling.   

He’s wasn’t dead, mind you; just caught in a loop called, “One-of-these-days-when.”  It’s a vicious loop, really; an unending circle so rooted in “when,” that it is a fatiguing, ongoing, and never-ending cycle of unrealized hopes, frustrated plans, and aborted possibilities.

And then one day the future became the present and the young guy was old.  One-of-these-days became a footnote to a story that began with, “Once upon a time.”  He was young and then he was old and he wondered about what had actually happened in the in-between times.  Where did the time go?  How could it have passed so fast?  How did he get from there to here?  What was his story?  Did he, in fact, have a story? 

It was all such a blur now but he knew that the blur was actually comprised of very real moments and events and people and stories.  In the moments there was no blur, just very real life in a very real world.  What was now a blur was, in the moments, filled with laughter and tears and successes and failures and friends and enemies and learning and unlearning.  There was food and drink and appointments and tests and decisions and a thousand other things and places and encounters and ups and downs; there was life.  But, now it was a blur.  It was decades of life that now became known as “Once upon a time.” 

Once in a while, however, a few and very blessed, people come to themselves and see themselves as recipients of great grace.  Why it took so long to get there is a mystery.  But even mysteries can be celebrated. 

Some times when others might think a story is over and conclude that there never really was a story at all, one lone person gets a gift and sees that what once was, is only a prelude to a miracle of life so powerful that it actually shakes the foundation of a person’s soul, and they wake up.  They wake up – alive – hopeful – still breathing – still dreaming.  Only this time, because of the blur, they embrace new laughter and tears and successes and failures and friends and enemies and learning and unlearning and food and drink and appointments and tests and decisions and a thousand other things and places and encounters and ups and downs with a hallelujah.  It is a broken hallelujah, mind you, but it is a hallelujah. 

Once in a while someone caught in a loop breaks free and catapults out of the loop with such force that when they land they are bruised and broken and bleeding and fatigued.  They may even limp for the rest of their lives.  Yet, the breaking free was so powerful and creative that the bruising and brokenness and bleeding and fatigue become signs of the miracle, a miracle they would not exchange for anything.  They were dead and now they live.  They were pawns caught up in a vicious loop but now they are alive in a new story, a story that trumps the past and by which they enter into the future knowing there are still wonders to behold, stories to write, lives to love, people to embrace, mysteries to unravel.    

Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  The young guy who was now old knew it well.  Some times before we can know our story we must look backwards.  Some times when we are in the moment we forget to live the moment.  It is in looking backwards that we really see the moment and what it was or wasn’t about.  Some people seem never to look back and see.  Others take their stories, the good, the bad, the highs and lows, the victories and failures, and use them as prologue to the future.  More than this, though, they take their story and see it as a way to live into the future.  They become more intentional and thoughtful knowing that even this present moment if not embraced can simply become a “once-upon-a-time.” 

Awaken by grace, a thousand times the young guy who was now old said to himself, “Even at this late date my mantra shall be Carpe diem – Seize the day! Even at this late date it is Forward Still for me. Even at this late date I take what is given to me and I give it to God who has made this moment possible. Even at this late date, ‘My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever’ (Psalm 73:26). Even at this late date, ‘Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.’” (by Moses Hogan, published by Lyrics © Hal Leonard Corporation).

Once upon a time there was an old guy who crashed into God one day and the impact was so great that it shook the foundation of his life.  Stunned, he rose up, staggered unsteadily forward, only to recognize that behind him and beside him and before him and underneath him and over him and in him there was God.  Then he got a glimpse of something so powerful it steadied his stagger, balanced his steps, energized his life, and convinced him that grace was everywhere.  God whispered into his ear, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1, NIV).

           

The Most High was leading him, and that was enough.   It changed his way of thinking, of being, of acting, of living.  It swept him up into a story bigger than his story.  It swept him up out of the yesterdays and the “one-of-these-days-when” and into the infinite possibilities of God who is the Almighty.  The Almighty Most High was with him. 

Carpe diem!