Despondency

‘Breathe on me, breath of God’: Think about Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37): the bones were dead and in disarray. If that describes your life right now, there’s good news. When God breathed into those bones they came to life, stood up, and became a force to be reckoned with. (…) Notice also that when the Spirit of God came into Ezekiel’s valley, broken things were mended and dead things brought back to life. And God wants to do the same for you! Notice what else took place: a ‘rattling’ (Ezekiel 37:7 NKJV). That’s standard procedure with God. Before he uses you, he shakes up your comfort zone, your proven methods, and your set-in-concrete ideas. Your past is no problem for him, because his eyes are on your future. So come into his presence today and pray, ‘Breathe on me, breath of God. Fill me with life anew.

Bob Gass

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 2/7/2019

Don’t seek to make others miserable: ‘Let all bitterness…be put away from you.’ Ephesians 4:31 NKJV

‘In 1882 a New York businessman named Joseph Richardson owned a narrow strip of land on Lexington Avenue. It was five feet wide and 104 feet long. Another businessman, Hyman N. Sarner, owned a normal sized plot adjacent to Richardson’s skinny one. He wanted to build apartments that fronted the avenue, so he offered Richardson a thousand dollars for the slender plot. Richardson was deeply offended by the low offer and demanded five thousand dollars. Sarner refused, and Richardson called him a miser and slammed the door on him. Sarner assumed the land would remain vacant and instructed the architect to design the apartment building with windows overlooking Richardson’s land. But when Richardson saw the finished building, he resolved to block the view; no one was going to enjoy a free view over his plot! So 75-year-old Richardson built an apartment building on it, five feet wide, 104 feet long, and four storeys high. Upon completion he and his wife moved in. Only one person at a time could ascend the stairs or pass through the hallway. The dining table was eighteen inches wide. A newspaper reporter of some girth once got stuck in the stairwell, and after two tenants were unsuccessful in pushing him free he exited only by stripping down to his undergarments. The building was dubbed ‘the spite house’. Richardson and his wife spent the last fourteen years of his life there. In 1915 it was torn down. Bitterness builds a lonely house with only enough space for one person. The lives of its tenants are reduced to one goal: make someone miserable. They do. Themselves!’

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 9/12/2018

Jesus says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Rick Warren comments: ‘For many years I never understood that verse, because I didn’t know what a yoke was. When Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you,” it sounded to me like he was going to give me something else to deal with. My burden is already heavy enough, Lord. I don’t need to take your problems on me, too.

A yoke is actually a board that has two arches in it that you put over two cattle so they can pull a cart. The value of a yoke is that it halves the load. Without a yoke, one cow’s got to pull that entire load by itself. But if you yoke up the cow with another cow, then the two cows pull the load together, and the load is half as heavy.

When Jesus says to take his yoke upon you, he’s not saying he’s going to give you his problems. Jesus doesn’t have any problems! He’s saying he’s going to share your problems. He’s going to share your load. He’s going to take your stress on himself and bear it with you. Wow!

He uses three verbs in this verse: come, learn, and take. Jesus says, “Come to me. Team up with me. Then, learn how I do it. Take on a lighter load. This is going to reduce your stress. This is going to make it easier for you to navigate.” When you’re yoked with Christ, you move together with him. You move in the same direction and at the same speed. And you move in the right direction and at the right speed.

Rick Warren, Daily Hope devotional (accessed 02/02/2018)

In Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, the story is told of how the main character, Christian, travels through a place called, ‘The Slough of Despond,’ on his way to the ‘Celestial City.’ On his journey Christian meets a man in an iron cage and inquires of him, “What art thou?” In response the caged man answers, “I am now a man of despair, and I am shut up in it, as in this iron cage. I cannot get out, O now I cannot.” The caged man goes on to say, “I am what I was not once.” That’s such a vivid and accurate description of what despondency is like; an iron cage holding you prisoner.

Despondency is the means by which animal trainers teach elephants to stay put and stop them from trying to escape. As an infant, the elephant is tied to a stake in the ground by securing a heavy iron chain around the elephant’s foot. Try as it might, the young elephant is not strong enough to break the chain and free itself. Eventually, after many painful attempts, the elephant becomes so discouraged that it finally succumbs to despair and gives up, never to try again. From then on, even as a fully-grown adult measuring around 11 feet in height and weighing up to 4 tons, the elephant can be secured by only a thin rope and it will never again try to escape, (too many painful memories!)

In reality, of course, a fully grown elephant could very easily escape if it really wanted to but the fact is, the elephant is conditioned to think that it can’t free itself and so it no longer bothers to try. In other words, the elephant doesn’t know any better. Don’t allow despondency to trap you into thinking you’ll never escape. You can and will. Just keep going.

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour, excerpt from Maximize Your Potential

I have an old pair of prayer walking boots that I’ve kept as a visual aid to spur people on in the Christian walk. One of the boots in called ‘Trust’ and the other is called ‘Obey’. They are tied together because they are the left and right boots of the Christian life. – Trust and obey. God will bring you through.

In the Leaning Tower of Pisa there is a spiral staircase which has such a steep gradient that only one step at a time is revealed as you climb it. As each step is taken so the next one comes into view and this continues until you finally reach the top. Sometimes life is like that: We just have to look up, keep climbing and take each day one step at a time.