The Great Hope Available Through Depression

IMPOSSIBLE is a word that is suitably challenged by anyone who believes.

We are so used to accepting that depression is the end in itself — a despairing disposition that either has us resigned to hopelessness or challenged with courage to overcome.

Could it be possible that there is a great hope available through depression?

It is this: because of depression there are deep incursions into the reality of our personal existence. We will experience more life through depression, not less. But our conceptions of what life is will have to be challenged. Of course, there has to be hope that we will convey all the way through the depression to a land of ascension. And when we do, we have this enormous stock of depth to ourselves that people who haven’t had depression just can’t possibly have. Depression is a life experience. It gives us entry into compassion for the suffering. It helps us be vulnerable enough to reach out for help. And depression pours contempt all over our pride.

The great hope available only through depression is the life-transforming gravity that moulds our soul in an irrevocably good way. But this hope must be front of mind in order to know the goodness of God converts bad things into good for those who love him.

If we believe in the possibility of overturning the impossible and making it real in our experience we begin to believe in miracles when that actually takes place.

The privilege for the believer is they hold to the possibility of miracles — not least, in their own life. And when the miracle comes to pass, because it was believed upon, our belief in God is not only engorged, but we bask in the glory of the new manifestation.

The manifestation we believe for is a great hope that becomes a beneficence to us, personally. Suddenly, not only do we see hope in overcoming our depression, but we see a burgeoning hope that we now see its very purpose — the deepening of our personhood.

God used depression to make us mature and able to survive anything, if we can hope beyond the despair of the depression itself. That is an act of the will — a pure decision that anyone can make.

***

God uses the darkness of this life — all of which combine in our depression — to make us mature and able to survive anything. If we see the potential for growth because of our depression we can begin to believe good can come from it.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.