Knowest thou not that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, that spring and summer succeed winter? Hope thou then! Hope thou ever! For God fails thee not. Dost thou not know that thy God loves thee in the midst of all this? Mountains, when in darkness hidden, are as real as in day, and God’s love is as true to thee now as it was in thy brightest moments.
*Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Morning and Evening: Daily Readings.
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One reason the Psalms are so popular is their honesty about our inner feelings. In the Psalms we see the emotions we face, all the way from loving feelings of praise to bitter feelings of hate.
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A note of prime importance is feelings referred to in this writing can entail a need for assistance through counseling or medication, or both. So, as you read below, recall I am speaking of feelings of a nonclinical nature, or at least nothing more than what could include such diagnoses as dysthymia, which is a condition of persistent mild depression.
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Depressive feelings are noted in English by many words. We may say, "He has the blahs." Or, "I feel bleak." Or, "I just feel in a blue funk." Or, "Wow! What a bummer!" You can talk of being dispirited, distressed, doleful, dolor, downcast, or having heartache. We may feel despondency or disconsolateness, or gloomy. The words are many, the feeling is one: sadness. So, whether you feel on the heights or in the dumps, just wait around, and you will again feel the opposite.
Let us look together at what a Psalmist says about his inner feelings. And we can consider whether we have ever felt like praying what he did. We can ask, "Am I this honest in prayer, or do I think that my depressed or hurt feelings are not worthy to share with my Beloved?" Or, "Are not worthy of a man or woman who trusts God?" I will give Psalm 42 (NLT) - notice any words that speak of heartache:
1 As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
2 I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?
3 Day and night I have only tears for food,
while my enemies continually taunt me, saying,
“Where is this God of yours?”
4 My heart is breaking
as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
amid the sound of a great celebration!
5 Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and 6 my God!
Now I am deeply discouraged,
but I will remember you—
even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan,
from the land of Mount Mizar.
7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
9 “O God my rock,” I cry,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I wander around in grief,
oppressed by my enemies?”
10 Their taunts break my bones.
They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”
11 Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God!
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Did you note the words of dolefulness and hurt? Obviously, the Psalmist hurt deeply. And he was not afraid to speak of crying day and night: a way of saying, "I'm crying all the time." The writer would have been a man - considering the culture and era - and he does what men tend not to do: admit his crying.
Sadness is a natural, helpful emotion. That is right - natural, helpful. I think this is why we like sad movies, sad songs, sad stories, and sad poems. Down deep, we know we need to feel sad at times. Sadness brings balance to us, emotionally and physically, and reminds us of our fragility and dependence. But, sadly, we can get attached to sadness. And some persons have known so much sadness, they do not know how to receive gladness. Being sad becomes a self-fulfilling drama, and that is neither natural nor healthy.
The Psalmist shows us a healthy expression of sadness, and how he integrates it with faith in prayer. While he speaks of his discouragement and melancholy, he speaks of hope. He intones, "I will put my hope in God!" And note the contrast between feeling flooded with despondency and the continuance of worshipping his Love - remember, worship is an expression of love, a loving:
7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
John of the Cross uses the same contrast in his The Spiritual Canticle. He writes, in Stanza 17:
Be still deadening north wind;
South wind, come, you who waken love,
Breathe through my garden,
Let its fragrance flow,
And the Beloved will feed among the flowers.
What is this "north wind" and "south wind"? The north wind alludes to feelings of dryness and separation from Love that often occurs on the spiritual Journey. These same feelings are integral to Psalm 42: for example, see the lamenting in vv. 1-4.
The south wind is summoned, for it wakens Love: dispelling the sense of inner dryness and invigorating the soul with a sense of joy in the Presence of the Beloved:
The south wind is a delightful breeze: it causes rain, makes the herbs and plants germinate, opens the flowers, and scatters their fragrance. ... The soul, by this breeze, refers to the Holy Spirit, who awakens love. When this divine breeze strikes her, it wholly enkindles and refreshes her, and quickens and awakens the will, and elevates the previously fallen appetites that were asleep to the love of God; it does so in such a way that she can easily add, you that waken love, both His love and hers.
Thus, the Psalmist relates his saddness to a sensation of separation from his Love. In John of the Cross, we see the same feelings and like aspiration for a return of Love, framed in verse, also.
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So, beyond our typical sadness, we can sense a sadness, even an ache of heart, due to feeling separated from divine Love. This can happen during prayer. We can be persons of devout prayer and service and experience deep sensations of being alone, from God and others, even when in a crowd. This is the same as being in a relationship and dearly in love with another person, yet, feeling emotionally cut off from him or her.
What do we do during these times of saddness along the spiritual Path? We follow the example of the Psalmist and John of the Cross.
1) Be honest about your feelings; this entails feeling them during your prayer and meditation, and can include confessing them silently or verbally.
2) Do not let saddness and hurt feelings in prayer drive you from prayer; rather, pray in and through them. One way of doing this is to voice your faith, like the Psalmist who voiced hope. John of the Cross does this in his praying for the coming of the "south wind."
3) Consecrate your sadness to God in prayer. Remember, you are not lacking faith or you are not weak due to your feelings of hurt or dolefulness. Rather, you are simply human.
4) Remember what the first thing is in prayer - and it is not to feel good or resolve your apparently negative feelings.
Oswald Chambers writes, in My Utmost for His Highest (July 11): "We utilize God for the sake of getting peace and joy, that is, we do not realize Jesus Christ, but only our enjoyment of Him." This is going in the "wrong direction." Why? The first thing in our life of prayer and service is not feeling good, or getting feelings of satisfaction, the first thing is giving ourselves to the One Who gives Himself to us, wholly. Feeling good and getting blessings from our relationship with Christ is a result of living in Him and He in Us:
6 Anyone who does not remain in me [or, live in me] is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. 7 But if you remain in me [or, live in me] and my words remain in you [or, live in you], you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!
*John 15.6-7 (NLT)
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Honestly, this writing today arises from my own sad feelings. Usually, in my morning devotions, I feel consolations and joy. Today was the opposite: I felt deep feelings of sadness. Yet, I was reminded of the normality and holiness of being faithful to living in Christ, amidst such feelings, and not retreating to a facade of positive feelings, conjured up out of a fear of facing my own inner hurt or confusion.
I read Larry Crabb, in The PAPA Prayer, speaking of the message of Jude 21a. It reads: "Keep yourselves in the love of God." Crabb says: "Is Jude implying that God could stop loving us if we don't behave in certain ways? Of course not. We're loved; we couldn't be loved more, and we'll never be loved less."
So, yes, staying in the love of God is not doing anything to keep God loving us. Yet, this is more like saying, "Keep yourself open to Christ, so Christ and you can keep sharing your love with each other."
Now, why would a Christian close his or her heart to such a loving exchange? Well, one reason is the same reason we get out of other relationships or shut down our hearts in them. Again, Crabb writes: "But we can choose to leave love's party because it doesn't always feel like a party." Indeed - "It is possible, and epidemically common, to move away from the reality of God's love and to remain in ourselves, self-obsessed and concerned with nothing more than our experience of fullness and satisfaction."
So, with other relationships, and with the Divine, we can quit due to a self-obsession whereby we put priority on what we get from the relationship - translated, good feelings, security, positive benefits - rather than priority on the relationship itself. Frankly put, most of our complaining about not getting what we want from God or others is a manifestation of our self-centeredness.
And how we pray in our times of spiritual dryness, confusion, and hurt says a lot about where we are in growing up into Christ. Prayer is a spiritual laboratory that mirrors to us ourselves. Listen, I confess, what I see of myself in prayer does not always bring joy; sometimes, I seem to keep relapsing into the same self-centered patterns. But, that waxing and waning is itself part of our growing up in Love. And that is why even in human relationships the extreme brokenness is the moment a renewal can occur, for the brokenness can either be a door we slam to walk away or a door we walk through to a new exploration of healing and Grace - Just read the Book of Hosea. And, recall, Peter grieved that he denied Christ, but he walked through to a deeper relationship with his Love. Judas betrayed his Master, and he went out and ended his life.
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So, do you sense a reason sadness is good and healthy in our spiritually relationship with Love? We learn more deeply the nature and blessing of True Love when we love within our inner dryness, saddness, depression, hurtfulness, aloneness, ... We hope and pray, if need, for relief, but we offer our feelings as prayer. We keep putting faith in the relationship, the Person, not the consolations and graces that can arise from the relationship.
So, our private quiet times are periods not only to love God, but to receive Love. And these times have their own ebb and flow, teaching us to find joy in being with Love first, not getting something other than Love first.
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*Spurgeon's Knowest thou not ...: See Christian Classics Ethereal Library - www.ccel.org .
*The material from John of the Cross: The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez.
*Charitable contributions would be appreciated to assist Brian in continuing his ministry. For contributions, contact Brian at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Brian's book of spiritual love poetry, An Ache for Union: Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major booksellers or the Cokesbury on-line store, cokesbury.com .
*Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist Pastor, lives in Southwest Florida. He is a vowed member of Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in South Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and seeks to inspire others to enjoy a more intimate relationship with Christ. Brian advocates for a spiritually-focused, experiential Christianity and renewal of the Church through addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons.
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