I am depressed… (Psalm 42) 310107
‘I am depressed.’ This was an expression of a robot in a B-graded movie I had watch a few years back. I have forgotten the name of the movie, its about travelling around the galaxy, searching for the ultimate answer to life. Anyway, the ‘depressed’ robot left a deep impression in me. Maybe it is because the robot is a reflection of myself at times.
When is the last time you feel depressed? How do you manage your depression? Or what do you do when you are depressed? I know there are people who will simply ignore others around them and start hurting other innocent people. I know there are people who just sit around or sleep the whole day and do nothing. I know there are people who will go shopping and spend all they like and regret later. I know there are people who will pretend to be all right but feeling miserable within. I know people who will nurse their depression so as to enjoy the care and attention of others. I also know there are people who will commit suicide because they don’t know how to handle their depression, they just want to run away from it and killing themselves is the best way they can think of.
The composer of this psalm was depressed too. Maybe he was being oppressed by the enemy. Sometime when we are being treated unfairly, we may feel angry only. But there are also times that we may begin to question ourselves, it there anything wrong with us? We may begin to doubt about our identity and question about God’s sovereignty and begin to feel unwanted and depressed. I read a book lately about conflict management. The author says that we Christians are easily emotionally misguided into conflict situation within us. It is becasue we hold on to our ‘gut’ theologies which are some theologies that only encourage us to be a ‘goodie’ person by supressing our emotions. Now I begin to understand why I feel the way I feel sometimes. It is because I have the wrong theology about myself. And how to have the right theology? Ask God. Cry out to Him and ask Him to help us.
The psalmist declared his desires for God (v1-2). He was not ashamed to acknowledge his emotions and doubts (v3, v10). But He was also not ashamed to call out to God (v5, v9 and v11). His cry reflected his relationship with God. Therefore, when we are depressed, we need to acknowledge our emotion of being downcast. It is alright to cryout to God in our despair. Recently I was very stressed up by my study and other workloads, I was on the fringe of going into depression, but I chose to cryout to God, I chose to let God hears my copmplaints, I chose to depend on God and I felt that the burden had been lifted up from me and felt much better and able to trust God to see me through my stressful workloads.
Put our hope and trust in God. Praise Him because He is our deliverer and He is our God.
