Why are so many people depressed during the Christmas season? Because they know they’re supposed to feel, well, merry. Like everyone else seems to be. But for some reason they don’t. The shallow happiness of the holidays only serves to magnify the emptiness inside.
But look at the stubborn hope stuck in the heart of a guy who went through suffering that most of us would whimper just to think about…
The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
(Lamentations 3:25-26)
With chaos and confusion surrounding him in Jerusalem (think about the images from Baghdad you’ve seen over the past few years and then multiply that level of carnage a few times), the author of Lamentations chose to be still and look for the ways God is working.
When things go wrong, hopeful people don’t assume God is taking a nap. They just look harder to see what he’s doing. They patiently wait until they can find the good God is creating.
Even with his world collapsing around him, the writer of Lamentations was able to be reflective. Meditative. But that didn’t mean bunkering down in his bedroom with his iPod set on his Emo playlist and retreating from real life:
It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone in silence
when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust—
there may yet be hope;
let him give his cheek to the one who strikes,
and let him be filled with insults.
(v. 27-30)
The images he chose in these verses all have the picture of servanthood. And that reinforces the clear message throughout scripture: You want to find hope and meaning and purpose? Start giving things up. You want to find your life? You gotta lose it first.
It’s almost impossible to be depressed when you’re focusing all your attention on serving God by meeting the needs of the people around you. You just won’t have the time to worry about your own problems. Self-sacrifice naturally breeds hope, because it forces you to look past your day-to-day worries to the future:
For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict
or grieve the children of men.
(v. 31-33)
When I go see a movie, I don’t want to know anything about the ending. Nothing. If I’m reading a movie review, I’ll skip over all the paragraphs that spoil any part of the story. But it’s exactly the opposite in real life. I’d pay anything to glance just a few years ahead in the storyline to see what’s coming. What I constantly need to remind myself is that God’s already told us.
The author of Lamentations obviously had the end of life’s saga in mind when he wrote this. No matter what happened in the world, he knew that God’s love would win. No matter what kind of horrible (or even slightly annoying) things God puts in your life, hope comes from knowing that he’s using them for his purpose.