A beautiful passage from The Valley of Vision.
I pass through a vale of tears
but bless thee for the opening gate of glory at its end.
Enable me to realize as mine the better,
heavenly country.
Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage.
Uphold my steps by thy Word.
Let no iniquity dominate me.
Teach me that Christ cannot be the way
if I am the end,
that he cannot be Redeemer
if I am my own savior,
that there can be no true union with him
while the creature has my heart,
that faith accepts him as Redeemer and Lord
or not at all.
By the way, I hate that there are parts of my pilgrimage that I hate. And that’s okay that I hate it. Jesus begged for his cup of suffering to pass, too.
You don’t need to love suffering — the way that some in the church have turned it into video game power-up, as if one needs to explain and even glamorize the thing that caused Jesus to weep.
But our pilgrimage does include suffering, and yet thank God that, as the passage notes, there’s a gate of glory at its end.
For the depressed, that sounds like rest.
(I’ve always liked the conceptualization of “eternal rest” better than “eternal joy” or “bliss” etc, because if you’re depressed, anxious, OCD, PTSD, or any number of things — rest is something we often can’t even do even when we rest, right? So it sounds really nice).
