Taboo | Depression: God’s Word Gives Lasting Hope (Psalm 42)

Depression feels so overwhelming. Many times, there’s the feeling of having no hope. Here, we see the psalmist feel despair, his soul thirsting for the Lord. But then he talks to himself. Why am I so down? Even in this desperate situation, he is my Savior and my God. If only that was the silver bullet. However, depression can be like a yo-yo; wrestling match in the mind. One minute we know our hope is in God. The next moment, we are back to despairing. Keeping God’s Word in our mind, thinking about the hope we have, meditating on his promises, and the hope we have in him.

Transcript

My dear Divine Savior family. It’s so hard not to be with you right now. Every Sunday I’m gone, it just never feels normal. It’s always a resonating reminder of why God lovingly calls us to gather as a family united in faith, connected by baptism, and joyful in hope. Worship is getting to hear again our worth to Jesus, and how God’s love for us knows no end, his grace never comes up short. To see each of your faces is a wonder I don’t deserve, nor ever will. I never enjoy missing out on that, and that’s especially true at this time in our family’s life. As many of you know through our weekly correspondence, this last month has been a raging storm, but it’s not a storm void of joy. The Son of God is always shining behind every cloud of sadness, confusion, and hurt. Jesus is most certainly here. Yes to witness a dearly loved family member go through betrayal cuts deep, to see the effects of sin so personally, its trust-destructive nature, and how it shatters vulnerability. But this is precisely why I’m overjoyed that we’re getting to hear what God’s voice of the Word has to say when we face depression, as strange as that may seem! And I pray the Lord bless us as we see in his Scriptures this grace-defined life of the Christian to be a joyful griever. 

The griefs of this sin-infected world run in all of our veins, all of our memories. I know such griefs too. For much of my life, for whatever reason, I’ve found myself taken to tragedy, fascinated by people, specifically Christians who battled depression, melancholy, or Anfechtung. To hold a book and sit in the same room as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, and Carolina Sandell, Christian men and women who spoke about such darkness of happy-less-ness that can’t help but draw you in with empathy. Yet each one perhaps shockingly had a gift for speaking about the Light that shatters every misty gloom of sin’s darkness, opening the door of a seeming paradox that is the Christian faith, that because of our grief, we know the only true, satisfying and infinitely marvelous joy this universe has ever witnessed, and then to realize that Joy himself walked among us and continues to rule within us.

So yes, we will be traversing a dark road together today, one that may seem fearful, but we need not be afraid. For we have before us the words of Psalm 42, a precious ray of light, one I treasure more and more, as you watch a man on the screen who confesses to you an acute awareness of the darkness, and this psalm has walked with me through much of it. My prayer, as it always is, is that you forget entirely about me, and see what your Savior has to say to your soul, how your church family is designed to take part in that conversation too, and how our most depressing moments will not be the end of us, but rather will lead us to the beginning of joy.

That’s what the Holy Spirit led the Sons of Korah to know, although we don’t know the exact circumstances he used. Scholars can’t pinpoint what sparked this psalm to be written, of course, inspired by the Holy Spirit himself. Some think it was written after Israel was torn apart by a brutal civil war, leaving the northern ten tribes cut off from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the author here is longing to go to the Temple which is barred from him because he lived in Israel. It leads to an intriguing thought, doesn’t it? As this Christian struggles with depression, the longing to be in God’s house bursts forth.

You can feel the desperation in his voice, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” The Hebrew word for panting is like a slow agony that comes from a draught. The psalmist is thirsting for the living God in a life landscape of exhaustion physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He wants to meet with God, he wants his tear-based diet to end, he wants his spiritual enemies to be silenced, the doubts haunting him, “Where is your God?” So what does the psalmist long for? The house of God, the shouts of joy and praise, to leave this soundless life of isolation, and to be whole again.

It’s a struggle found in every form of depression, diagnosed or otherwise. As Christians, we dare to trust we are loved, even when we feel nothing at all. It’s the daring conversation with our own souls, something only by God’s can we experience, when the psalmist says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Don’t these words echo in your heart, when the end of your rope is reached, when that last cut of life’s adversity makes its mark? It’s in those shadows, that your soul must be spoken to, and never forget who is in that room with you. He’s the One who made sure these very words were written, how the Scriptures have always had the unique ability to put to words mind-bending emotions. Even more so, the Scriptures tell us why God is worth placing our hope. And what hope are we speaking of?

It’s no imaginative thing, it’s the scarlet thread that has woven history together, woven you together, and every stitch of every one of your life’s circumstances. The scarlet blood that flowed from the One who entered the pounding waves of our deepest sins, our deeply stained sinful condition, and the cascading waters of death, and came out on the other side in blinding light. He is your Rock that cannot be eroded by sadness, nor pulverized by despair. By grace, you know the heart of your rock, your Jesus. As Diane Langberg wrote, “The heart of God is moved by suffering; he does not stand apart from it. He is not a distant observer but a present Redeemer.” And from his heart flows the Word of truth, his Word that meets our emotions and gives objectivity, in our heart’s heaviest moments, God’s Word never fails. And this Word’s thread runs scarlet with the blood of the Lamb, our Messiah who was forsaken more than any human being will ever know, so that he would be the eternal comfort of us who deserve to be forsaken. But such forsakenness is not for you to know, dear Christian. Even you ache like the psalmist, when your physiology mirrors the pain of your psychology, “My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?” The voice of Satan and our sinful nature in the dissonant sound of doubt and despair. Where is your God? You know where he is. He’ll never leave you. See his cross and know his presence remains your deepest treasure. He’ll never abandon you. His love seeks you.

His love sought that you would be placed in the deep waters of baptism, with water and Word, forgiveness and true identity swept over to you, rejoicing brought out in heaven, true welcome in your Father’s arms was made yours. He will always remember you, even when you feel forgettable. As the song so beautifully says, “Remember me in a Bible cracked and faded by the years. Remember me in a sanctuary filled with silent prayer. And age to age and heart to heart, bound by grace and peace, child of wonder, child of God, I’ve remembered you. Remember me.” When facing depression and all its disconnecting layers, know that praise will return to you. How can I say such a thing so boldly? Because as Herman Sasse wrote, “The Lord who bore our sins also bore our depression and sorrow…He stands with us in the darkness and carries us when we can no longer carry ourselves.” When the lights turn off, the Light of the world never stops illuminating you through his Word and sacraments. The darkness cannot touch him.

And because we long to be in his light, we long to share in that light with those dear ones who are bonded to us by more than mere genetics and circumstance, but by baptism, by faith, by truth, by our Savior himself, our king. It’s why the psalmist was desparate to be with his brothers and sisters in the Lord again, so Christians could remind him it’s not the outward events disturbing us but our forgetful of the One who will always call you his own. So what does this look like when we face those moments of lethargy, not wanting to get out of bed today or tomorrow, those moments of energylessness when we can barely find the strength to function, we need to be reminded of the life that is not only ours in the future, but is now ours as we speak. 

It’s why we worship together. To sing to our souls to remember our hope in Jesus. To look again on the timeline of eternity, the continuum of forever that God himself has placed you on dear Christian. The gospel guarantee that there will come a day when the clouds of this veil of tears will break, and those raindrops of tears will dry up when you see Jesus coming back for you, yes for you. The gospel of the cross and empty tomb, this message is what has called you of belonging to the darkness, to stand in God’s marvelous light. It’s why I find it so fascinating that out of the all the words God could’ve used to describe his people, he chose ἐκκλησία, meaning to be “called out.” Not in a Platonic way, but being called out the darkness of sin and death, into a light, his light, the true light. It’s why we strive as “called out ones,” and his church to be a family who bares souls, a family who invites each other to speak to our souls, to turn away from the false hopes of this world, only to be captured by the certain hope of Jesus. This bold expectation that when you sit in this sanctuary, or you see the number of people watching alongside you online, that you can speak of your struggle, your darkness, not fearfully wondering what judgment will be brought down on you, but knowing a prayer is coming, a hug is incoming, and simple reminder: “Jesus knows. He’s here. I’m here.” 

And what does Jesus have to say to such joyful grievers such as ourselves? Listen to what he said as he faced carrying all our griefs to the cross, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” See in Jesus who he’s always been. Your rest. Your Sabbath. Your joy. In our world defined by anxiety, so often clothed in depression, take heart. Take heart. Because your Jesus is still shining, and as our brother the apostle John once said, “The darkness has not overcome it.” “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Amen.