Sunny with a Chance of Clouds

I know you’re hurting right now. You might be asking yourself if it’s alright to feel the way you do: sad, depressed, lonely, isolated, helpless, hopeless, maybe anxious, all with no end in sight.

• I’m a Christian!
• What right do I have to be depressed, when I know that I am a Christ follower, and I understand all that Christ did for me on the cross?
• Does this mean that I’m not praying hard enough?
• I’m not reading my Bible everyday – is that it?
• Have I committed some sin that I forgot to confess?
• I must be a bad Christian.
• I am sure that God can’t love me when I don’t love me. I don’t even like me.

I understand these thoughts – they go through my head every time I find myself struggling against depression, every time it wants to push it’s way back into my life.

Here’s the thing. We live in a “fallen world.” That means that this is not the perfect world that God originally created – it has sin in it now. And all of creation, not just us as humans, suffer from the consequences of sin, which is all things that lead to death. All bad things. All sad things. All pain and suffering and anguish and heartache. All things inequitable, unfair, not true. All things not of God.

For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:19-22, NLT)

But when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was nailed to the cross for our sins, it wasn’t for just our sins. It’s all the sin of the world. That means that when Jesus was crucified, sin was nailed to the cross. Christ died for my sins, yes – past, present and future, and for the sins of all mankind. But He also died for what sin brought into the world. So Christ died for depression, for anxiety, for any mental illness, for those who are starving, for those who are hurting, for those who are persecuted, for those who are sick, for those who are dying, for those who’ve been neglected. All of the things that are not from God.

For now, the journey through life, including through depression, is hard. But it won’t always be that way. Christ overcame the cross for us. He overcame sin. And one day, we will live in a world without sin, and all that sin brought with it. Depression included.