Purple Unicorns on a Rainy Day

God as Our Strength to Serve
Day 16
If you have never wrestled with depression, it doesn’t really make sense to you. Imagine the feeling you get on a rainy day, you know that groggy, tired down deep feeling that sweeps over your body around two in the afternoon when it’s been raining all morning. Sometimes it only lasts a min. and then is gone as quick as it came. Well imagine how you would feel if you couldn’t shake it. What if lasted hours, weeks, years? That’s kind of what depression feels like.

When you feel that way, all the verses and encouragement and self help books on the shelf don’t seem to do much more than make you feel bad for feeling bad. Now I’ve never been diagnosed with clinical depression, never asked the doctor for drugs, I did try to self medicate myself with a silver can or a glass bottle a few times but it didn’t do much good. That being said, there are still days I don’t want to acknowledge the rising sun. Days where a shower is the highlight of my productivity between naps. Days when the love of God is is about as tangible as a purple unicorn.

The truth is every-ones struggles are different. But at some point I realized my wars with the me-monster were rooted in unproductive introspection and down-right selfishness. But my problem isn’t knowing that I have a problem. My problem is you can’t argue away a rainy day. You have two options, 1. get an umbrella and face the rain or 2. find away to get above the weather. It’s always sunny above the clouds, if you fly high enough.

Isaiah 40
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth
Does not become weary or tired.
His understanding is inscrutable.
29 He gives strength to the weary,
And to him who lacks might He increases power.
30 Though youths grow weary and tired,
And vigorous young men stumble badly,
31 Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.

And what are we supposed to do with that strength?

1 Peter 4
8Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. 9Be hospitable to one another without complaint. 10As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.11Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

We are supposed to serve one another.
I am in no way claiming to have the answer to all depression. I fully acknowledge that there are those who live with legitimate chemical imbalances. But I would be lying if I said there’s not something beautiful in this idea of finding my strength and rest in a God whose yolk is easy and whose burden is light. It would be dishonest of me to say that I don’t believe the truest form of victory over the “rainy day” is to love and serve others.

If you want to see God do something amazing, need Him. The only way to see the light at the end, is to enter the tunnel and face the darkness. I’m just glad our God is a God of light, and that WE are the light of the world. If we can get over ourselves, be honest, and work together as the body of Christ we will shine and radiate and the darkness will hide.

1John 1
5 This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another...