Our teaching scripture this morning comes from Lamentations
chapter 3, verses 16 through 26. He has made my teeth grind on
gravel. He has made me cower in ashes.
My soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness
is, so I say, gone is my glory and all that I had hoped for
from the Lord. The thought of my affliction and
my homelessness is Wormwood and gall.
My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
Therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who
wait for him, to the soul that seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the
Lord, The word of the Lord. Before I get into preaching, I
just want to give. A quick.
Shout out from the front so. Our friend Luis this past.
Week, if you don't know, passed his citizenship test so friends.
This church has. Been traveling with Rachel and
Luis through this long process of, of Luis's immigration
process, all the ups and downs and just the tumultuous journey
that that's been and. Guys, we love you these.
Two and Rio are so. Precious to this church.
Family and just, we just wanted to take the opportunity to shout
Luis out from the front and celebrate that with them.
As a church so. If you have an encouraging word
or something to share, let him have it.
So the book of. Lamentations is a series of five
poems written by an anonymous. Author after the catastrophic.
Exile of the ancient Israelites to Babylon in the 6th century
BC. Lamentations and the other
lament poems in the Bible sort of stand as a form of protest.
As a way to process. Emotion and a.
Place for people to voice. Confusion with why things.
Are the way they are. Suffering makes us ask questions
about God's character. Suffering makes us ask.
Questions about what the heck is going on in the world and none
of this is looked down upon in scripture in.
Fact, quite the opposite. The words that we read this.
Morning the the words of human grief in the Book of
Lamentations have become. Part of God's own word to His
people, have you? Ever thought about how profound
that is? That there's a whole.
Book in the Bible. That just.
Describes suffering from the human.
Perspective we actually. This morning, read the only
hopeful and encouraging words in the Book of Lamentations, and
that becomes. Part of the scriptures, part of
the way that God speaks back to. His own people.
Chapter 3 is the. Longest poem and it holds, like
I said, the only real. Words of hope, but our.
Passage today begins. He has made my teeth grind on
gravel. He's made me cower in ashes.
My soul is bereft of. Peace.
I've forgotten what happiness. Is so I say.
Gone is my glory and. All that I had hoped.
For from the Lord the thought of my affliction and my
homelessness is Wormwood and gall.
My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down before me.
So we're in this series on the passions of the soul, the.
Passions are just deep, God-given.
Capacities to feel, to desire. And ultimately to respond to
what is good and the early Christian writers didn't see the
passions as enemies to be. Suppressed, but as impulses
that. Often need healing within us and
each passion when touched. By the love of God.
Can become a place where transformation actually begins
inside of us and so today we are looking at the fourth of these
passions in our series despondency and so this.
Week as I thought about. Sadness and despondency.
I was like Lord. You know, I'm preaching on
despondency and. God said I will, I will.
Bring the the mood. So, you know, I got up this
morning and was like, wow, how fitting that it's like this.
And then I was like. But we were also supposed to
pull weeds outside and stuff, so that's.
Kind of inconvenient, but anyway it's fine.
In the early church, what we called.
Despondency was often described in.
Other words. So if you start to.
Look for some sort of primary. Sources or you look for.
Despondency in the scriptures you won't often find.
That exact word used if vagarius called it sorrow, that corrodes
hope. John Cashin called it sadness,
and later the Eastern tradition started to use terms that sort
of sounded. Like the idea of loss of heart.
And so over time, English translators began using
despondency to capture the same. Reality that these early
sources. Are trying to.
Sort of piece together what we're talking.
About if you remember. A couple.
Of weeks ago when Carl preached on Acedia.
We're not talking about restlessness like Acedia, you
know, if you'll remember. Acedia is sort of this like.
Longing this kind of outward looking, you know, I'm trying to
get out of my circumstances, the noonday demon.
I hate how my life is. And so we're having flights of
fancy and thinking about, you know, how else things could be
in in a in a sort of attempt to escape.
But despondency is this weariness of.
The soul. When?
Hope sort of gives out. And so that's why we're using
this word. Because it just sort of captures
this wide. Variety of meanings that we see
throughout time. Despondency.
Has lots of faces. It can look.
Like a quiet. Cynicism that's kind of always
running in the background. A numb distraction doom scroll.
Fatigue. Sort of an inability to become
present in any way because internally we find.
Ourselves. So sort of.
Numb and almost like there's nothing going on.
The lights are on. Nobody's home in our soul, and
so we still move fast. The pace of our life doesn't.
Change. We're doing all the things that
we would normally do. But our souls have stopped.
Moving despondency is is sort. Of like your heart has.
Run out of breath. The former Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book The Passions of the
Soul, describes this kind of. Spiritual sorrow.
Saying When love is tired of stretching outward, it curls
back on itself and. Calls it realism.
So I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but like you
are in a particular season of your life where things seem
hopeful and alive and you can sort of imagine a.
Future for yourself. Or your family or the community.
That you're a part of. And then maybe some things start
to shift, some disappointment comes, there's some brokenness
that kind of like sneaks its way in and you start to become a
little bit cynical, a little bit.
Hard hearted about what's? Going on around you and you just
say, well, I'm just being realistic about the situation.
That's like kind of where the door is just.
Cracked open a little bit to this thing that we would call
despondency. So today I want to just name
despondency as this long weariness of the soul that has
stopped expecting renewal, that stopped expecting love or hope
to come to us as much as any of the passions.
Despondency is the one that at least I find myself.
Sort of. Pretending my way through,
refusing to acknowledge that there's a sense that you know,
I'm I'm here and I'm moving through my life, but I'm not
really here. I'm not really present.
There's just something happening inside of me that's taken my
hope down a few notches, and I can be present, but I can't
really be present. And so the invitation in all of
this that I want us to just kind of hold before.
The Lord before each other is to resist.
Pretending that this isn't going on inside of some of us and
allow God to begin to heal what's gone numb a number of
weeks. Ago I was.
Speaking with some of the folks who are responsible for the A A
meetings. That we have the privilege of.
Hosting here in the church. By the way.
Do you guys know? That we're about to be host.
To five different recovery meetings throughout the week.
That we like have. The lights on and the doors
open. Almost.
Every day of the week. At this point, that's something.
That is just like. Really, you know, this this
building, this physical location is like a gift to us from God
and we have increasing opportunities to share it with
our neighbors. And so I'm just so pleased that
that's happening. But I was talking with some of
the folks who run a couple of the A a meetings in our space
and and was just sort of sharing, you know, my.
Prayer for our church is. Regularly that this gathering.
That this group of people. Would begin to look more and
more like what's happening in those meetings because I don't
know if you know this when people.
Show up for a recovery. Meeting.
There's not a lot of pretending going on.
Folks seem to sort of have an idea.
About like why they're there. And that, you know, there's like
some. Real stuff.
Going on and. I just hope that over.
Time, as we grow in being a community of prayer that engages
suffering, as we sort of push out into the neighborhood and
we, you know, love our neighbors well and so on, that we would
also be growing and just showing up in spaces like this and
bringing what's true and what's real.
About our lives because. You know, there's there's so
much sort of untruth that we can be tempted to bring into.
Church with us. And it just, like doesn't serve
us well. It doesn't help us know God.
It doesn't help us know one another.
It just helps us. Kind of maintain like an image
and so. Just that that we would be.
More and more like an A a meeting that honesty and not
perfection would be the thing that we would understand as.
Sort of the doorway to. Everything that God has for us
in our lives and before we go any further.
I want to pause. On what we actually mean when we
talk about despondency. Because a lot of.
US will immediately wonder how does this interact?
With depression. So I know depression is
widespread or sadness and and the truth is that sadness and
despondency and depression are things that overlap in kind of
complicated ways, but they're not the same thing.
And I want to just. Provide that a.
Sort of a clarification and something for us to.
Hold. As we consider.
Like what is actually? Happening inside of me.
These aren't clinical definitions.
I just want to like, you know? Level with you that this.
Is my my sort of working? Like pastoral kind of
philosophy. Of how these things tend to.
Work together because they do work together.
Sadness we can think of as a temporary and situational
condition, that it comes in response to loss,
disappointment, or pain. And sadness still believes that
something matters. It still reaches toward healing
given time and comfort and the you know, the the intensity of
sadness tends to pass. It doesn't go away.
The thing that we. Feel sad about still exists.
As a true condition. Of our life, but it's sort of
the the. Body and the hearts way of
saying something I love is missing.
Depression, on the other hand, is clinical and embodied and it
involves changes in the body and the mind, energy and sleep and
chemistry and mood. And it's a medical and
psychological. Reality that deserves.
Therapy and treatment and compassion and seeking that kind
of help is not a lack of faith. It's not a misunderstanding
about how the passions work. It's one of the.
Ways that we let God heal us. Through the wisdom and the.
Care of other people. Someone can be clinically
depressed and still very spiritually.
Alive likewise. Someone could be mentally
healthy and be experiencing a deep kind of despondency.
Does that make sense? So these things are not one in
the same. But they're very.
Similar and so you know, it just takes.
What it what it really takes is real.
Discernment to figure out what we're dealing with, what's in
front of us. Despondency is not a passing
feeling, and it's not a clinical condition.
It's a state of the. Soul where we've.
Grown weary. Of.
Hoping and where love and desire kind of fall asleep.
And the early church tradition actually talks.
About a lot of the. Other passions sort of
proceeding from despondency because we get sort of tuned out
of what's actually going on inside of us and any number of
things can follow from that. It's not.
The. Shock that comes with sadness.
If you've ever experienced, you know, something tremendously sad
or traumatic in your life, it doesn't.
It doesn't pack quite the same punch.
It's just this thing that kind of tempts us to believe that
nothing can be made new. Nothing in your day-to-day life,
nothing out in the world can really change.
And so despondency, it's not this dramatic.
Crisis. Sometimes it's just the quiet
decision to live in a smaller story to just.
Believe a little bit less about what could be true for you to
believe a little bit less about what could be true.
For the world around you and to just turn the volume way down
on. Sort of hope for the future.
It's it's. Fatigue of meaning.
It's this corrosion of trust that life.
Could still surprise. Us with some kind of.
Gift of grace. You know you you can maybe think
of a time where something beautiful in your life happened
or you experienced. The love of God through.
Something out in the world, something in your life A.
Beautiful piece of art or a. Moment in nature or something
like that, and despondency. Is just sort of like.
Yeah, that's not really for me. Depression can empty the energy
and the focus and the. Capacity to feel joy.
And when that goes on long enough, despondency often moves
in behind it. Just in one of these.
Sort of ways that they work together.
It it whispers this must. Be all that there is.
And so the emotional fog of depression becomes.
A. A spiritual.
Weariness of meaning. It's why.
The way forward isn't just through willpower.
And it's not just through treatment alone.
Those things are very important. We allow God and other.
People to reach into all of these dimensions of what's
happening inside. Of us, the body's.
Exhaustion. The soul's loss of hope.
The conditions of our life and the love of God can touch the
whole person, not just the mood or the mind.
But the whole all. Of the things that are happening
inside of us. And so I just want to emphasize,
we don't sort these things out alone.
It it must be something that we discern in community, in
therapy, in what we call formational healing, in
spiritual direction, in friendship and community.
These are all places where the light.
Of another person's care can help us see what's really going
on inside of us and there are times when it's.
Hard to tell. Where one of these things ends
and the other begins. And so that's why all of these
things work best together, the healing for what's going on in
our inside. Life rarely.
Happens in one lane. Does that make sense?
So whether it's your therapist or a pastor.
Or a small group, or a trusted friend.
That's why as a church. We want to lean into just a lot
of imagination for the. Life that we share together.
God's healing presence. Reaches us.
Through the discerning presence of other people, I can remember
a stretch when Bri and I hadn't been married for long.
We were both still undergraduates and in addition
to working part time. For the Vineyard church that we
were at. At the time I was taking a full.
Load of classes. And I was working the overnight
shift at a restaurant from 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM four or five
nights a week, and everything in my life kept moving.
I I successfully. Completed that season of life
and I never missed a day of work and I didn't get sick.
I I did skip a lot of class but it.
It all kind of happened like it all kept going but underneath I
had completely. Stopped.
Believing that anything new could happen in my life.
I mean, just the mind numbing nature of working in a
restaurant alone, some of you know, is enough to do this for a
person and with all the other things kind of layered on top.
Of that I was just. Flat I wasn't.
Angry. I wasn't particularly sad.
But I just kind of, you know, woke up tired and went through
the motions and felt a little bit.
Like I was. Watching my own life from a
distance. Have you ever?
Maybe experienced a season of life like that.
That's kind of what despondency feels like.
And so the days. All blurred together.
And nothing felt terrible, but nothing felt particularly alive
either. And my whole life, my whole
inside life was just kind of on autopilot.
And This is why, you know, I talk about pretending at the
very beginning because listen, that whole time I'm preaching
regularly and praying for people and, you know, having good
conversations at the restaurant. And have a very active.
Social life and all of that, and nobody.
Ever. Would have been able to look at
my life and say like. That guy is completely checked.
Out but the truth. Is I was.
Completely checked out. There was nothing going on in
here. Does that make sense?
And so this is this is despondency.
It's not dramatic. It's really easy to maintain for
a long time, but. Slowly it just erodes.
Our sense of meaning, our sense that like, yeah, I'm, I'm here
in the world for a reason and there's a purpose for my
existence. You keep showing up that you've
lost any real expectation that God might meet.
You where you are. And so you smile when you're
supposed to, and you fulfill your duties, but inside there's
this dull sense that the color is just completely drained out
of your entire life. That's despondency.
At work. And.
I think it's actually really helpful to have.
Language to give to that feeling.
That's such a common experience that many of us have, and so
despondency is like. Exhausted.
Pain. It's it's the point.
Where our hearts just shut. Down in the spiritual tradition
it's sometimes described as. The heavy collapse that.
Comes when hope gives out, like when we just kind of hit this
point where it's like, I don't think I can continue to believe
that anything will get better. And it just the whole thing kind
of comes down on itself. And in this weariness, the ways
that we find ourselves pretending that we're fine and
we hide our numbness are vast. We kind of curate competence.
We call exhaustion calling like, well, this is just, you know,
what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
And and you're way overextended, but you seek some kind of
purpose in that. Avoidance becomes something we
call peace. So I just have so much peace in
my life. And it's actually because you've
just decided to sort of look. Away from everything that's
consequential, we call numbness maturity.
So, you know, you're just totally numbed out to the needs
of other people or the things that are going on around you or
the complex web of relationships.
That you're a part of. And we?
Just sort of say like. Well, it's because I'm mature
that I'm not affected by all of the stuff that's going on around
me. The reality is you've just tuned
out, we tell ourselves. If I keep moving fast enough,
maybe I won't have to. Feel how still it feels.
Inside of me. We paper over the the.
The deadness inside. And sometimes we cling to the
illusion that we can fix ourselves in in this.
Regard we we tweak. Our commitments to just make
things work a little bit better for how we're feeling or we read
another book or the thing I always.
Do is I I. Delete everything from my Google
Calendar and then I start. Over I've probably talked about
this. Before, But you know, I'll just
like sit down and just take out all the recurring events and all
the things that I've planned to do.
And then I think, OK, given how I feel and the circumstances of
my life, I will rebuild my Google Calendar in a way that I
can sort of manage and show up for all the things that I need
to do. And so then I, I build it again.
And I think now I'm going to like live into this new reality.
And then I'm still sad. And this is, this is what makes
it a passion. It can't be healed by better
management. It can't be healed by any effort
of our own. It can't be.
Healed by just. Praying a little bit more or
just reading your Bible a little bit more.
Did you say that? Yes, it can't.
It, it just can't. There's not a thing that we can
do that will make it go away. It bends reality until some kind
of illusion about what's going on inside of us feels safer than
the truth. And we would rather maintain
some kind of facade than taking the terrifying leap into
whatever lies beyond self disclosure.
And just saying to somebody, I'm not really here.
I don't feel anything when I pray.
I don't feel anything when I think about my family, whatever
it might be. That's just.
The reality of what? This thing does inside of us
despondency also, and this is important.
For our public life. Becomes fertile soil for
manipulation. I think this is particularly
important for the season that we are in right now, all the things
that we're observing going on in our city, in our nation.
In the hearts of people. On.
Facebook or X or your. Drug of choice when people.
Are too weary for hope. They start looking for borrowed
energy. They start outsourcing moral
feeling to whomever promises certainty.
And we look for belonging and we look for strength.
Outside of ourselves. In something out in the.
World that feels particularly. Strong or certain.
And when a whole culture sort of sinks into spiritual
despondency, it stops believing in this kind of interior renewal
that's available to us and starts reaching out for some
kind of spectacle to make us feel something and we become
vulnerable to. False fire to.
Voices that promise passion without love and energy without
empathy and conviction without discernment.
And I just want to. Say a little bit about this idea
of false fire or deceptive lights.
Have you heard that phrase before with regards to?
Sailing, I know we don't have many sailors in the room, but
you know, something that would often happen, like when?
When? Yeah, yeah, I know.
It's silly when there would be enemy ships right coming toward
the. Shore of a particular place.
One of the things that would happen in sort of ancient
warfare is, you know, ships. Look for lights to dock.
In a particular place, or to invade in a particular.
Place. And so this idea of.
False fire is sort of that. You know the the defending
forces would set up. Bright lights, torches, fire
that would be visible to ships. From kind of out in the sea to
lure them into dangerous. Waters to actually cause
shipwrecks and I think this is a really.
Helpful analogy for what's happening inside of us with
regards to despondency. Because what's happening is, you
know, whatever is on the inside of us is so unclear.
It's so foggy. It's so murky.
That we're sort of. Like looking out.
There for like where to dock what do we do because all of.
This is so uncertain that I have to find a place where I know I
can kind of guide this thing into safe.
Harbor. And we become really vulnerable
to a kind of. Spiritual or social false fire
where we see. Passion out there.
We see something out there that we don't see in ourselves.
And we just steer this. Thing straight into dangerous
waters the Catholic writer Romano Gardini said that when
meaning. Collapses power.
Becomes its own justification. Hannah Arendt warned that
loneliness prepares people for totalitarianism.
Everyone that studied sort of dangerous movements that happen
out in the world root this stuff in what's going on inside
individual people. And as a result.
What's going on in the collective and?
Where we sort of put. That energy when despondency
goes untreated, we become allergic to nuance because the
idea of thinking carefully about something consequential is like,
I'm, I'm so confused inside of myself.
There's, I don't have the capacity to to think deeply
about this right now and. History is full of these
moments. People are exhausted by war or
poverty. Or any number of things.
And so they turn toward people who promise dignity through
domination. There are disillusioned people
who channel their pain into scapegoating and blaming the
other. For the.
Ache that they can't quite name. And the crowd.
That's full of. Despondency can't find its
pulse, doesn't know what to think, but it must have
something to do with them. And so if we scroll long enough,
we can see all of this stuff happening, like despondency
curdling into nihilism in real time, and people that we know
and love. People trading hope for memes.
And listen, I love a good meme. Disillusioned folks finding
community in contempt for one another, this kind of
scapegoating and finger pointing, it's all animated by
this passion of despondency. And it's not just a passion on
the individual level. It's it gets.
Gathered up and it morphs into ideology when fatigue sort of
seeks relief in outrage when. People look for.
An enemy to help them feel alive.
People look for someone else to feel for them because they can't
feel anymore. It's an emotional outsourcing on
a. Wide scale.
But remember. I told you that today's.
Passage contains some of the only hopeful language in the
Book of Lamentations. But.
This I call to mind. And therefore I have hope, the
steadfast love. Of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning. Gray is your faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
Therefore I will hope. In him the Lord is.
Good to those who wait. For him.
To the soul that seeks. Him.
It is good that one should wait. Quietly for the.
Salvation of the Lord. Without those words, the rest of
this passage. Would identify.
Pretty closely with what we're. Identifying as despondency.
But the truth is. The poet in Lamentations does
not find himself in despondency, because there is this turn in
the passage. And so when we read these
verses, remember we said this. Is about.
The. Israelite exile to Babylon.
The city is still in ruins. Nothing external has changed.
There's no sudden breakthrough, there's no light breaking
through. The clouds, the poet.
Has not stopped lamenting. They go on for another. 2
chapters. Of lament after this and has
been painfully honest from the beginning.
But what happens? Here is a move from not, not
from truth to pretending, but from despair to remembrance.
It's easy to read a passage like.
This and think you know these are just.
Feel good words that this. Person is sort of recounting to
to pretend like everything is going to be OK and that's not
the case. This is in the middle of sorrow
yet. The poet refuses to let.
Sorrow have the final word. He stays in the ashes and calls
to mind what he cannot yet. See the Steadfast.
Love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies will never come to
an end, and this is what. Faith looks like.
Inside of despondency when we find ourselves in that place,
the whole thing that I. Described and it's like, yes, I
check all those. Boxes, at least I do.
I don't know. It's not the denial of pain,
it's the decision to. Face it before God.
The poet doesn't climb out of the situation.
He doesn't. Sort of leave all that.
Behind him and say I'm pretending like that's not the
case. It's not willpower, it's
consenting to let the memory. Of God's love address.
The ache that won't go away. It's a.
It's.
A consent. It's a concession to say I know
these things about God, I've heard them said, and I don't
even find it particularly resonant right now, but I'm
going to call to mind. This truth?
And Lamentations even ends. With the poet's brutally.
Honest reflection. Are you familiar with the the
closing words of Lamentations? Restore us to yourself, O Lord.
That we may be restored renew our.
Days as of old, unless you've utterly.
Rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure.
That's how the book ends. That's the, that's the close.
I mean, it's like, wow, OK, but listen, there's hope.
Not when the world is. Fixed.
But when the poet remembers. That God's love is.
Still moving in the ruins. Of the city that he loved.
It's the smallest act of resurrection to say, even in
deep. Sorrow, therefore I will still.
Hope in him and. This is the gospel.
Of the Kingdom, friends, this is Jesus Christ that that in Christ
God entered the ruins himself, and in the cross and
resurrection Jesus has broken the power of sin and death and
despair and the future reign of God has already begun to break
into the present, even if that's.
Through a weak. Word of remembrance in the
middle of sorrow, that's where we find the Kingdom.
And so, if you find yourself overwhelmed by the heaviness of
your soul, hear this good news that the Kingdom is already
coming near and even now. The Spirit of Christ is at work.
Within the ache that we feel for ourselves, for our families, for
our world. Bringing life out of death.
Bringing meaning out of sorrow and hope out of despondency.
The love that raised Jesus. Is already moving in the ruins
of our inside life. Of our life together.
And this passage serves as a beautiful reminder just to sort
of call that to mind even as we acknowledge the reality of
what's going on around us. There's a David Lynch film I
Know You're. Worried you were like he.
Hasn't talked about a movie yet. There's a David Lynch film
called. The straight story.
Has anybody seen it? The straight story.
It's one of my favorite movies. I love this and I actually
hadn't thought about it in a long time.
And then as I was preparing to. Preach this week, I thought.
I'm going to watch that again, and it's based on the true
account of Alvin Straight. A 70. 3 year old man who set out
to reconcile with his estranged brother.
He couldn't drive, he couldn't obtain a driver's license
because his eyesight was too. Poor.
So he hitched a small trailer to a lawn mower and set off from
Lorenz, Iowa to Mount Zion, WI, more than 200 miles away.
This is about a 250 mile trip. It took him six weeks going 5
miles an hour. Across back roads.
And cornfields breaking down and being helped by strangers and
then starting again and it was nothing.
Spectacular. It was just slow.
Stubborn. Movement like it is exactly.
Like it sounds if you just imagine a stubborn old man who
decides he's going to drive 250 miles on his lawn mower.
That's what this story. Is just on its face and what
makes it so moving. Is is actually that?
Alvin is not. A heroic figure.
He's old. He's broken, he's full of
regret. He can't stop smoking Swisher
sweets the entire time. You know he's, I mean.
The the trailer that he's got. You know has 1 iron chair and
hot dogs. He eats hot dogs for the entire
trip. But.
He's done pretending. He's done pretending like there
isn't something really wrong with his unreconciled
relationship with his brother, and he moves at only the pace.
That his body. And his 1966 John Deere riding
lawnmower can handle sort of like Lamentations.
It's this story about grace. That doesn't come to Alvin
through. Escape or insight, but through.
Facing his demons head on. And I won't spoil the end of the
movie for you, but it's beautiful.
It's one of the most beautiful sort of moments in cinema.
I've actually. I actually feel like I'm about
to cry thinking about it. It's really good guys, you
should watch it. I know I've there are a lot of.
Movies that I've talked about. From up here that I.
Can't give like a full. Throated endorsement of you know
as. A pastor to say like, go watch
that. You should go watch the straight
story. So listen again to these words
from the poet. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. His mercies never come to an
end. They are new every morning.
God's compassion for you is not a mood swing.
It's an ecosystem. It's an environment that we can
choose. To live our lives in.
It's it's the constant background.
Of reality, the love that. Keeps pushing beneath everything
else. If we'll let it.
It's not, you know. Did God wake up?
On the right side of the bed. Today.
And so there are all. Of these ways.
Silence and lament and honest. Prayer.
Eucharist. Embodied community.
All these tangible reminders that God's kindness is not an
idea. It's a body.
That breaks, and it's love. That's poured out for us.
Henry now and once wrote, You must believe in the yes that
comes back from God. Before you hear it.
From any human lips. Faith isn't pretending that
things are fine. It's quietly.
Trusting that God's love still holds in the midst.
Of your everyday life. Even when you can't feel it.
So that's where the. Healing of despondency begins
and I just want to. Close with.
This that if you found yourself identifying with some of these
things and saying I think I might have a little bit of that
going on inside of me. Right here.
In the refusal to pretend about what's actually going on inside
of us. Is where the mercy of God?
Comes to us so we'll invite the worship team back up and we'll
have folks along the sides to pray and I just.
Want to what to propose because a lot.
Of times moving into prayer time.
We think you know this is a moment.
To like get get healed and maybe it is.
That's great. But I want I want to.
Just suggest that maybe this. Morning isn't about feeling
better. It's about.
Getting honest about what's going on.
And so if you find that you've been sort of holding it together
on the outside, but you're a little numb on the inside, come
and let someone pray with you. If.
You find that God feels distant. Just come, come and name that
before God, before another person.
And if you find. That you're tired of.
Performing Wellness. Come and receive prayer.
Just invite you to stand for worship.