I recently read the story of Ernest Shackleton’s failed mission to be the first explorer to cross Antarctica. Shackleton was a British explorer whose plan was to sail as far south as he could and then walk a hundred or so miles across the South Pole. Unfortunately his ship got caught and crushed in polar ice several hundred miles from its destination. For more than a year Shackleton’s crew fought to stay alive on the ice in subzero temperatures. But afterwards they reported the worst thing was not the subzero temperatures but the darkness. The sun goes down in mid-May and doesn’t come back up until mid-August in the South Pole. The crew reported there is no desolation so devastating as the polar night - darkness all the time.
Some of you know what it is like to live in that darkness. The devastating darkness of depression. It may be situational or it could be persistent. Regardless, it’s crushing darkness.
You’re not alone. Jeremiah (Lamentations 3:1), David (Psalm 31:9-10), Hannah (1 Samuel 1:7), and Elijah (1 Kings 19:1-18) all struggled with depression. Charles Spurgeon, believed by many to be the greatest preacher to ever live, once said in a sermon, “I have spent more days shut up in depression than probably anybody else here.” And the wife of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, professed to having to hide all the knives in their house for fear he would injure himself during his bouts of depression. Christ followers are not immune to depression.
God has a promise for you! Nehemiah 8:10 declares “…the joy of the Lord is my strength.” How in the world does one find joy in the throws of such darkness? With all respect and sensitivity, please allow me to share a few suggestions.
Open Your Eyes
Look for places of joy in your life. Yes, they may be hard to find, but they are there. Margaret Feinberg chronicles her journey with cancer in her book, Fight Back with Joy. She speaks of creating a “joy wall.” She literally fashioned a wall where she hung pictures, objects, and reminders of things that brought her joy and she made it a daily habit of focusing on that wall as a reminder of the joy of the Lord. How might you construct a joy wall?
Open Your Ears
In Elijah’s story (1 Kings 19:1-18) he spends 40 days and nights in the wilderness of darkness. As he lies in a cave there is a violent wind that passes by, an earthquake that rumbles, and a fire that consumes, but God isn’t present in any of those things. He shows up in a small, gentle whisper. Sometimes we listen for God in the spectacular and He wants to speak in the mundane. We are waiting for the booming voice and miss the whisper. Where might God be speaking to you?
Open Your Arms
In Fight Back with Joy, Margaret Feinberg shares of a habit she developed delivering red balloons to all the patients at the chemotherapy treatment center. On her darkest days, when that was the last thing she felt like doing while receiving her own chemo treatments, she realized that giving joy away brought herself joy. In our darkest times when we have trouble finding joy, we can often find it by opening our arms and giving it away to someone else.
Ryan Smallwood
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