12-27-2015 Bioethics Part 38

The speaker starts by praying for guidance and discusses the complexity of depression. They mention that people tend to ignore or simplify complex issues. They discuss the physical factors that contribute to depression, such as medical problems and brain chemistry. They also mention the common Christian belief that depression is spiritual and can be caused by sin or demonic possession, but they argue that it is not always the case. They emphasize that depression can be a result of both physical and spiritual factors. The speaker then introduces five categories to study depression: life situations, feelings, bodily symptoms, behavior and activity, and thoughts. They stress the importance of slowing down and reflecting on one's life situation, and the benefits of involving others and being honest about struggles. Let's pray and get started this morning, God we thank you for the time that we have this morning to come together and read and think and pray and sing and learn and pray that you would encourage us this morning, in Jesus name, Amen. Last week we talked about the complexity of something that many of us have faced or will face or may be facing at the time that we're speaking which is depression. Because it's so complex, with everything that's complex in this world, it really doesn't matter what it is, what's our tendency as human beings when we're dealing with something complex? Ignore it. Okay, yeah, ignore it. Simplify. That's right. One of those two would probably be the main default position of all of us, we just get too overwhelmed and we're like, I don't even want to think about it. Or we simplify it. Narrowing it down to only one thing. We saw that when it comes to something like depression, it's easy to do this when we say, okay, it's only physical. Why would it be... We saw that it's not only physical, but what are the physical things that play into depression? At least the ones we looked at last week. Huh? Yeah, physical health. Yeah, so medical problems, right? Like we talked about, if you lose an arm, your arm's actually gone. You're probably going to be sad about that. Like you don't have an arm anymore. Or even in the brain, like what happens in the brain? Chemicals. Yeah. Great, yeah, so we've got chemicals in the brain. So even if you have a perfectly functional physical brain, it doesn't mean that chemically that brain is always going to be functioning right. There are even something as simple as caffeine, right? Which is one of God's greatest gifts to humanity. This, drinking this coffee, which is the elixir of the gods, does mess with one's brain chemistry. It's what makes you more hyper or less hyper. It's what... Same thing happens when you drink Coca-Cola or something like that. The chemicals in your brain change. Your physical brain doesn't change, but the chemicals in it do. So, this is kind of the secular idea of depression. It's just only physical. We just have to balance those chemicals, and we'll be good to go. Which, that's partly true, but not all the way true. What would be the common Christian tendency to view depression as spiritual? Right, so we have the older model that depression is essentially demonic. You've got to cast out the demons and you'll be okay. Which isn't true. It doesn't mean that demon possession could not result in depression. But it's not true that if you're depressed it's because you have a demon. That would be, again, too simplistic. Or, we could think about the kind of more modern thing of the reason you're depressed is because you're living in sin. Does living in sin contribute to at least the possibility of depression, yes or no? Yes. Well, what's wrong with saying, if you are depressed, you're in sin? Yeah, what's wrong with that though? Everybody's always living in sin. Arianne? Everyone's in sin? It depends on the situation. Whether you are actually in sin or you are in a state of depression. Yes. I have been in a depression. Exactly. Yeah. It depends on what state you're in. Yeah, so you could say, like, we're talking with somebody, we kind of mentioned this last week, we're talking with somebody that's in depression and they're not exactly clear why they are where they're at. The one thing that will probably depress them more than anything else in this world is to say, hey, you know why you're feeling this way? It's your fault. You did something to make yourself this way. And the person's in a situation going, I don't know what the heck you're talking about. I don't know, what did I do? I don't know, but you must have done something. But what we've done doesn't always make us feel particularly as it can, but it doesn't have to. Sometimes we just wake up and find ourselves in this kind of state that we do not desire to be in. We don't want anybody else to be in either. So the reality is that those who are experiencing depression probably have a bit of trouble in both of these areas. There's probably something physical going on. There's probably something spiritual going on. There's a whole range of factors that go into making us who we are as human beings. We are complex creatures and therefore anything that happens to us happens for a complex number of reasons. So our goal today is to begin to look at the condition of depression, to try and figure out what the heck is depression. Again, we are not trying to become psychologists in this room. What we're trying to do is to learn how to love our neighbors well. So we're going to focus on five parts of our lives. These will probably not surprise you in any way, shape, or form, but hopefully these will help us to be a little bit clearer and to help others. We're going to look at life situations, feelings, bodily symptoms, behavior and activity, and thoughts. These aren't tightly sealed categories. They will bleed into each other and each one affects the other one, so it will be helpful to distinguish these just for the sake of studying. Also, we're going to spend most of our time, this is probably going to take two weeks to do, we're probably going to spend most of our time in the thoughts category because that's the area where so many of us go off the rails and where things really start to spiral out of control. So, life situation. I even have handy-dandy again this week for the sake of all of us who like to follow along. Life situation. PowerPoint. We talked a few weeks ago about how our society is tailor-made in some ways to breed depression in us. Anybody remember or can anybody think of why that would be and what ways is our society? We're not the only society, but our society is almost tailor-made for this. Individualistic. Right, always something new. Discontent. And it's always fast, right, it always has to be faster, so it has to be better, it has to be faster. Every human is a bundle of experiences throughout their life. It's akin to a roller coaster, isn't it? There are crazy ups, crazy downs, unforeseen turns, terror, joy, all mixed together. And though you and I have a tendency, all human beings have a tendency to do this, some people have a tendency to do this more than others, we can see the life situation of other people usually much clearer than we can see our own life situation. And you're usually right on that. Some of us can see our own situation a little bit better. Some people think they can see other people's situations real well. I'm sure we all have friends like that that just feel the freedom to tell us everything that we're doing wrong and they don't have a clue. But for the most part, most people can at least see other people's problems and the situation that they're in better than they can see their own. So there is, for us, a very real benefit to slowing down in life. You can read anything secular or religious. This is actually one of the really good places that Eastern religions and Eastern philosophy, they kind of trump at least the way that most of us tend to think about Christianity today. The way that we think about Christianity today in our culture is it's something that you should do, usually by yourself in a special room somewhere for about an hour if you're really spiritual every day before you then jet off into the world and just take it by the horns and then you go to sleep and you wake up the next day and do it again. Maybe go to church a couple of times during the week. That's what it is. I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with that, except for the fact that it's incredibly legalistic and really isn't doing us a whole lot of good. But what we can kind of take from the more Eastern ideas is this idea of meditation, just like slow the heck down, just kind of give up on life. This is super broad and generalistic, but we have to think about what we are doing. We also have to take time to just rest. And one of the things that would help us a lot is if we just take some time at some part of the day, just get into the regular habit of just trying to slow down and not looking at anything, right? Don't look at your... Oh, I'm going to take these 15 minutes and just play a game on my computer or something. And just reflect on God, your life, who Jesus is. Pray, but not even with a specific set of lists in front of you. It's often scary to do this because I can almost guarantee you that if you do this, as you think about your life situation, it will be worse than you thought it was. That you will not be as strong and as working it in the world as you thought you were. You'll be more tired than you thought you were. By seeing your situation more clearly, you'll see yourself as worse off, not better off, most likely. Which that need should then drive you towards prayer and seeking the help of others and humility. Not just being depressed. But it's even better when we begin to involve others in our lives. It's, again, very scary in the same way that slowing down is scary. Because I like to portray to you all that I have the world on a string. To quote the always wonderful Frank Sinatra. Right? You like to do the same thing. Whoever it is, you would like them to think that you have everything under control. And one of the most inhuman, or at least un-American, things that we could possibly do is to come up to somebody and when they say, how are you doing, respond in what way? That's un-American? Oh, yeah. So what's the most un-American way we could respond? Yeah, just tell you the truth, right? Not very well. Here's the things that I'm really struggling with today. Most people don't even know how to handle that. Maybe you're one of these people where somebody's actually been honest with you. You're like, oh, I'm uncomfortable. I have to go to the bathroom. It is a dangerous thing to do. So we, while we find it hard, we should really get into the habit of doing it. What this doesn't mean is that we should tell everybody everything. That's the mark of a fool, is one who just opens their mouth to everybody always. So you walk around. This doesn't mean you lie. You only tell the truth to certain people. But it's not like when everybody asks you, how are you doing? You go, miserable. Sit down. I want to explain everything that's going on in my life for the next 20 minutes. There is a real need to learn how to speak. But we can only learn if we start trying and failing miserably. We should find, though, some people that we can talk to about how things are going. The level of openness should always be truthful. But then there should be some who you're just kind of, here's everything that's going on. Here's who I am. Those kind of relationships are going to take time to develop. And the people that we should open ourselves up to are not just doctors, counselors, and pastors. I thank God for all those. I know that one of them is kind of self-serving or whatever. Dear God, thank you for me. I thank God for all those kinds of people that exist. Doctors, counselors, pastors. But the reality is that, for example, in my case, I am not a gifted counselor. That would shock nobody in here. That is not my spiritual gift. Not even remotely close. Thankfully, I'm much better than I used to be. And I desire to be even better than I am. But when you think, like, somebody really just needs to just be counseled, you probably aren't thinking, like, oh, Jeremy's the guy. And while on the one hand it would be nice to have other elders that were good at this, and it's my very deep hope that one day soon we do, pastors are not magic. And to think that pastors, counselors, doctors are kind of these specific characters in the world that can get things done makes it so that you really, as just an ordinary member of the congregation, you really don't have anything to benefit anybody. Right? You just point everybody towards these kind of specialized human beings that we're all thankful that exist. But you could be the person. You could be the person that is really helpful at checking out the life situation of other people and just helping others think through what's going on. Because really all we have to be is good listeners. Doing this will help us get a handle on not only how we are truly doing, but also what might be triggering our particular episode of being depressed. As this does come in waves, usually people are not depressed for their whole lives. They're depressed for a time. And then it goes. It comes back. And as people continue to experience these things, and as you're talking with people, you'll be able to begin to figure out maybe what some of these triggers are. Some of us, as we saw last week, are predisposed towards depression. Just biologically, that doesn't mean that you're doomed to depression. But regardless of whether you're disposed to it or not, usually there's something that happens or a series of things that happens that sends you off into a depressive state. Not always. But finding other people is a key thing to help determine your life situation. The next one is feelings. Feelings. As we saw during our time studying about homosexuality, feelings are interesting things, aren't they? Why are feelings so powerful? Yeah, okay. Right. So they're deep-rooted and a lot of factors go into them. And does it feel like our feelings are chosen? Not usually. Which is really hard to understand sometimes if you don't have a particular kind of feeling. However, give me a feeling that most of us have that we did not choose to have. That comes on as almost overwhelming. Sadness? Good. What else? Anger. There we go. Nobody sits there and goes, I'm going to get mad. You just find yourself getting mad. Some of us are more angry than other people. But these feelings just kind of come upon us. The way we feel is often based on what we think about a given thing. And we'll talk about thoughts near the end. But often it's interesting that we as Christians feel certain ways and sadly view those feelings as incompatible with being Christians. Right? If this isn't true of you, just wait for it. It will eventually be true or you will be associated with it. It will eventually be true or you will be associated with people who cannot begin to believe that a Christian could feel a certain way. It's very odd. It's one of the rough parts about being depressed and being a Christian. So we're going to take a look at some of these feelings that are part of being depressed and then actually just take the time this morning to look at biblical examples of people who are experiencing these same feelings so that maybe if you're here or if you run into people who say, I can't be a Christian because I feel this way, you can kind of say, well, it's not exactly true. Here's an example of somebody who was. This is just one example. We could look at plenty of examples of these kinds of feelings. Here we go. Overwhelming sadness. Now, when I talk about overwhelming sadness, I'm not speaking about what happens when your football team loses a game, even if you're fans of some stupid team like Alabama, Braley Chambers, and they lose a national championship. It doesn't matter. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm also not talking about something like eating to the bottom of an ice cream container and then realizing that A, it's gone, and B, you didn't have any help eating it. That might produce some sadness in you. It's probably not going to lead to depression. Rather, I'm speaking about the kind of sadness that's kind of all-encompassing and long-term. It's like fog. I don't know if you've ever been in thick fog, like crazy thick fog. You're going to see a few feet in front of you, and it just will not go away. It's one of the weirdest feelings ever, especially if you're driving a car. Just imagine being depressed like that. You just can't seem to get out of it no matter what you do. On top of duration, there's also a kind of feeling that is a mark of depression when the sadness makes you kind of indifferent to everything. It's sad, and then the sadness leads to just not even caring. Because it's so overwhelming, you just kind of seem to give up. Many people who are in this kind of condition go, I'm supposed to be happy because I'm a Christian, right? I'm supposed to have joy, and I don't have any right now, so I can't possibly be a Christian. Let's just read. Somebody please read for me Psalm 42. Whole thing. It's not super long. Out loud. We know the beginning verses of this probably really well, especially if we were like a church kid growing up in the 80s. Yeah, go. My tears have been my food day and night, while they've stayed with me all the day long. Where is your God? These things have risen as I pour out my soul. How would I go with the throne and leave it in the procession ground with God? With glad shouts and songs of praise and a multitude of peace. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Open your eyes, for I shall again praise you. My salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I am a hymn to you from the land of Jordan and a psalm from Mount Jude to God. Deep calls to deep. As a roar of water falls, all your breakers and your waves are going over me. By day the Lord commands his stiff-backed love and at night he songs to me a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God in my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As the deadly wound in my bone, my adversaries taunt me while they've taken me all the way home. Where is your God? Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Open your eyes, for I shall again praise you. My salvation and my God. This is a depressing song. It's funny because when you sing this, like the modern day kind of version, it's just kind of like this, oh, I just want you, God. Kind of weird. It doesn't get to the sadness, not even remotely close, of what's going on here. Remember that the psalms are communal. This isn't things that people sang in their quiet times or something. They sang them together. They sang them out loud. And these are the greatest hits of about a thousand year span of Hebrew poetry, temple songs. So, what we can glean from that is a number of things. One, this was the way a lot of people felt before. It's also the way a lot of people feel today. It's interesting that in verse 5 and in verse 11, you have essentially what we would know as a chorus. It says the same thing. Why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. The funny thing is, by saying it twice, and by then saying for the entire psalm that his life is miserable and he essentially just eats tears all day long, what he's saying is, what this thing is that ought to be true is not felt to be true in the moment. So he's trying to convince himself that this is true, but it doesn't seem to be working. He's having to say it over and over again. He's confessing it to be true, but it doesn't seem like it's just kind of working and getting him out of trouble. This is overwhelming sadness, for sure. It is a feeling that some of us have definitely had at times and is incredibly difficult. But, it's funny that the Bible actually, and again we can look at other examples, this is just probably the best one, the Bible knows this sadness and claims it as its own. There's another one, angry with God and with others. This is a big one, especially in men. I don't really have to explain this one very much. Some people are just angry people. I would definitely be in that camp. Shocking, I know. I don't like living in that camp. I try and not live in that camp. However, I'm just an angry person. That's not really what I'm talking about. This is kind of an anger that doesn't even know why they're angry. They just kind of are always firing off, just incredibly upset with everyone and with even God himself. And there's not a lot of reason to it. It's just anger for the sake of anger. There's a really good and sad example of this in the book of Jonah. Jonah. Little minor prophets. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. What in the world? I can't find it in my Bible. Help me out, somebody. Before Habakkuk? Yeah. Oh, okay. Got it, got it, got it. Jeez. These pages. All right. Let's... Let's just... Let's just... Let's just... Let's just... All right. Jonah 4. Let's read the whole thing. It's 11 verses. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry. Anybody know what the it is? That's right. God shows compassion to Nineveh and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh, Lord, is it... Is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious God, a merciful slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Therefore, now, O Lord, please take my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm to attack the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun to beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and he asked that he might die and said, It is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry? for the plant. And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor nor did you make it grow which came into being in night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle. There's a lot going on here but the thing that we would do well to see is that he's got no reason to be angry and he just finds himself ticked off with God over the little things and the big things without having any reason to be so. On top of that, you have this feeling that life is worthless. Again, some of us kind of have a tendency towards these kinds of things. This feeling of worthlessness would be regardless of the situation and the things that are going on. Nothing is worth living for. Oftentimes, one's own life seems like a burden to other people. Why should I go on living if this is just going to make everybody else create work for people? We can't really see anything that's going on that's good. It just seems better if it would end. The best example of this comes from the book of Jeremiah, a passage that we studied when I preached through this some time ago in chapter 20. Definitely the low point in Jeremiah's own life. Jeremiah 20, beginning in verse 14. Does anyone want to read that? 14 to 18? I'll read it. Cursed be the day on which I was born, the day when my mother bore me. Let it not be blessed. Cursed is the man who brought the news to my father. A son is born to you, making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities that the Lord overthrew without pity. Let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb. So my mother would have been my grave and her womb forever great. Why did I come out of the womb to see toil and sorrow and spend my days in shame? That's probably not the high point of Jeremiah's life. It does get better from there. Not his situation, but his attitude. But that is definitely a low point in Jeremiah's life, feeling as if life is worthless. Also this idea of feeling extreme anxiety and panic. This is put well by some people who said this. In anxiety, the person often overestimates the threat or danger they are facing and at the same time usually underestimates their own capacity to deal with the problem. I don't know if you've ever had a panic attack. It is overwhelming. I don't even think I've had very bad ones, but they terrify me. The crazy thing about a panic attack, for those of you that never had one, is you can't stop it. And the more you try to stop it, it's like quicksand, the more oppressive the thing becomes. Now some of us are just prone to panic attacks and you kind of get one every once in a while and then they go away and you're like, oh man, this is crazy, I don't want to have that again. It's good to actually have one? Why would it be good to have one? Throw it out there like that. Anybody know why it would be... I'm just saying there's not zero benefit to having one. Anybody know why it might be a decent thing to have one every once in a while? Exactly. So you can understand how other people are feeling. Some people are kind of given to anxiety and panic. It's kind of like the world they live in. And if you've never had one, it's kind of like, what are you crying about? Just get over it. That's a very easy response. You've got no reason to be anxious. It's all going to be fine. Just get out of bed or just get in the car and let's go. That's an easy response for somebody that's never experienced one. But it is quite something. And a consistent pattern of them is probably a sign that one is depressed. If you just find yourself anxious about everything and panicking about everything, especially if it's something that continues to build and build and you become to be this way more and more often. But again, can a Christian feel like this? Is this something that's consistent with maybe the people and the practice of God? I believe so. 1 Samuel 21. Young guy by the name of David. For Samuel 21, beginning in verse 10, says this, And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, Is this not David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands. And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and make marks on the doors of the gates and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? It's an interesting story, an interesting thing that's happening in the life of David here. But he seems to either be acting as if he's losing it or very probably he's actually just beginning to lose it. He is in an extreme amount of, if you continue to read this story before and after, mental duress because he has gotten himself into a rather deep hole and will not get out of it for quite some time in the book of 1 Samuel. Extreme anxiety and panic. Second to last, the fact that God hates you and is far away. Regardless of what you or others see as the work of God in your life, there's a feeling of abandonment in the present by God. There's also just kind of a lack of desire to know God, to be with God's people, to meditate on the word, to pray. It's just, I don't want anything to do with it. God is surely opposed to me. I want nothing to do with God. This is also, not surprisingly, a feeling that we find at times going on in the Bible right after the book of Jeremiah. You have the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah also wrote a very short book. And Lamentations 3, beginning in verse 1, says this, I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath. He has driven and brought me into the darkness without any light. Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. God hates me. He's far away from me. He's punishing me. It's a feeling that we have sometimes. Question. Are all our feelings true? No. Is that hard to see when we're feeling them? Alright, so then that goes back to the A, like the first one, right, life situation. If we find ourselves in this place, it might be that we can slow down and see that. But it's probably not going to happen very well. It's probably necessary to involve somebody else in your life to say, look, I'm believing these things. Aren't these things true? To have other people go, yeah, no, they're not true. Just because other people might tell you that doesn't mean you're immediately going to believe it. But you're going to have even less opportunity to get out of really what we would say are some pretty terrible places if we don't involve others. This last one being suicidal and or longing to die. Like these others, it's very hard possibly for you to understand how somebody can be suicidal. You just want to be done with it all. However, if you just add up what we have going on before this, imagine somebody that to some degree is overwhelmingly sad, angry with God and others, feels that life is worthless, feels extreme anxiety and panic, and that God hates them and is far away, then really being suicidal is kind of like given. Really what I'm surprised by is that more people aren't suicidal all the time. It's something I'm very thankful for, I'm very grateful for, but it's also kind of surprising given the overwhelming terribleness of some parts of life. We as humans are rather resilient creatures that tend to handle life much better than at least I would guess we would. But even the idea of being suicidal and longing to die is not fully unknown to the Bible as my favorite chapter in the entire Bible points out. It probably says more about me than anything, but Psalm 88, by far probably the most infamous psalm for the reason that there is no objective pointing forward of hope in this entire psalm. Again, this is something that people would have sung together, out loud. Like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the pit. In the regions dark and deep, your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape. My eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead, the departed? Rise up to praise you. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you in the morning. My prayer comes before you, O Lord. Why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I have suffered your terrors. I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friends to shun me. My companions have become darkness." I wonder if people clapped to that song. That is a person who is at the lowest point possible. One of the reasons I believe Christianity to be true is because things like this are confessed to be true. Because this is actually the kind of life that we live. Does it mean, we will close with this, that if you are experiencing one or a couple of these things, that you are depressed? No. We have to be very careful. It is very easy to just be like, Oh, you are probably just depressed. You should just go to bed. You should just get on something for that. Really, these are indicators of a condition that through time and through prayer and through thought and really just loving other people, we come to a place of being able to say, Man, you have got a lot of stuff going on. It is not that you, for example, felt that life is worthless for a week, but for months and months, and it is just this overwhelming thing that you cannot get out of. Maybe you have got something going on, helping people understand their life situation better. But I hope as we have seen, this is not something that is foreign to the people of God. In fact, if God is who he says he is, and we are who the Bible says we are, then depression is actually probably something that is going to be to some degree normal for some of us, because the promises are too good to be true, and our lives are often very difficult, and we tend to think that they just should not be this way. It should be better than this, and as a result, when things go wrong, they tend to go very wrong. So, it is my hope and prayer that as we think about these things, and as we pray for each other and seek to love each other well, that we would be wise in how we speak, that we would try to be loving and concerned for others, and that we would be able to truly help them, to cry with them, and then also to celebrate with them when they are celebrating, in order to be the kind of people that God would have us to be. Let's pray. We live in a very difficult world, a world that has always been difficult to live in, and we are weak and fragile human beings. We pray that you would give us wisdom, as we seek to truly love other people well, that we would try and understand how other people are feeling, that we would not assume how other people are feeling, that we would even, ourselves, when we are feeling certain things, just not assume those things to actually be true, that you would give us the desire to be patient, to rest, to seek out others who can help us better view our own lives. And we do pray for those who are amongst us, who are in our families, who are our neighbors, who are our co-workers, our fellow church members, who do struggle with depression, or maybe even there now, that you would use us as a means of comfort and your grace in their lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.