Because He Loves Us

August 17

Depression often springs out of a sense of failure, of frustration in our endeavor to achieve a desired end. Our financial investments are devastated in a deplorable economy and we slump into depression. Our romantic dreams are dashed and we plunge into an emotional pit of despair.

Sometimes the cause of depression is not readily identifiable. Sometimes depression can intrude into an otherwise pleasant, ordinary day. We are engaging in routine pursuits when suddenly, for no perceptible reason, we are overtaken with a sense of heaviness that we recognize as depression.

The syndrome is often diagnosed but rarely treated; often the sufferer continues in his misery for decades without confronting the emotional imbalance that causes depression and triggers it, virtually at will. Besides medication, which often has unpleasant side effects, there is another remedy for this malady.

Psalm 42:6 offers David’s solution. “I am depressed, therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon.” When we are in a difficult place—actual or emotional—if we will but reflect upon the Lord’s help to us in previous times of difficulty, we will be encouraged to trust Him to deliver us again.

It seems a simplistic solution to a problem that is impervious to solution, but if we will indeed place our focus upon and our complete trust in Jesus Christ, we, too, will say with confidence, "I don't know why I am suffering as I am, yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have entrusted to Him," II Timothy 1:12.

If we will say with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," Job 13:15; If we will say with David, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for He is with me, " Psalm 23:4, we may know as did these saints of old that we, as they, shall emerge victorious! We can share Peter's assurance that we may, "Cast all our cares upon Jesus, for He cares for us," I Peter 5:7.

We may put this burden of depression or sorrow or loss or persecution or despair or...upon Him and know He carries it; He carries it because He loves us.