Christian author, Zack Eswine, wrote one of my favorite books on depression, Spurgeon’s Sorrows, which discusses both Eswine’s own battle with depression and the great 19th century preacher’s.
Eswine writes of the Bible:
“A larger story about God exists that possesses within it a language of sorrows so that the gloomy, the anguished, the dark-pathed, and the inhabitants of deep night are given voice.
Such a God-story is neither cruel nor trite. Such a story begins to reveal the sympathy of God.”
Amen.
I’m so grateful for the Bible’s realistic view of life, the way lament and joy, sorrow and pain all exist — the very things that many Christian churches call fundamentally incompatible with the Christian life.
Our Savior himself was a “man of sorrows.”
And therefore, a man of compassion for both your sorrows and mine. For those with depression, with anxiety, with any kind of pain.
I don’t know how welcome the man of sorrows would be in many churches, because I know many men and women who feel unwelcome in theirs (nearly 20% say they’ve left their churches because of the stigmatization of mental health).
But within the Bible, within Christ, we do indeed find, as Eswine writes, “a language of sorrows so that the gloomy, the anguished, the dark-pathed, and the inhabitants of deep night are given voice.”
[Photo: The Gutenberg Bible, via NYC Wanderer (Kevin Eng)]
