I was on Youtube one evening last fall, and I happened upon this lady, Cecilia Blomdahl. What’s makes her unique is that she lives in a little town called Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard—about 650 miles from the North Pole.

They say “summer’s the best day of the year” there, and it’s the truth, because they experience the Polar Day. From April 19 to August 23, the sun moves around in the sky, but it never sinks below the horizon.

The spring and the fall are basically a perpetual sunrise/sunset, which I think would be so amazing to experience. But from November 14 to January 29, it’s the Polar Night, when the residents of Svalbard are plunged into complete darkness. For 2.5 months, the sun doesn’t rise within 6º of the horizon; not only does it not rise, there’s not even a hint of natural light.

What I’ve learned from watching her channel is that the people who live on Svalbard seem to make good use of the Polar Night. They spend a lot of time together in their homes, restaurants, bars, coffeeshops, and especially enjoying spectacular shows of the Northern Lights.

They’ve learned that you have to be intentional about spending time with others, waking up at the same time every day, and exposing yourself to (artificial) light, because otherwise a person can easily slip into a deep, dark depression.

But the reality is, you don’t have to be living in the Arctic to experience deep darkness of your own. There are times in each of our lives when the sun goes down, for weeks/months at a time, and you’re squinting to make sense of things that were crystal clear before, before you were plunged into the Dark Night of the Soul, where it’s dark, all the time. Days upon days without even a hint of light.

Last week we talked about the battle of the mind that we all face, to “love the Lord your God with all your… mind.” According to Jesus, an essential part of being a growing healthy believer happens in our own minds.

But what do you do when your mind just seems to get stuck? When you try everything you know to do, and you’re still not flourishing—in fact, just the opposite?

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If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, then open it up/turn it on, and let’s look at the book of Lamentations, chapter three.

I’ll give you a minute to find it, because it’s not one of those books in the Bible where the pages are all wrinkled, highlighted, and marked up because you’ve spent so much time there over the years. The book is a series of five poems, five laments (hence, Lamentations) by the prophet Jeremiah, basically about how bad everything is.

Jeremiah was one of the remaining survivors in Jerusalem after the majority of God’s people were taken by force to Babylon. Everybody that was left kept telling themselves that the worst was over. But God told Jeremiah that the worst was yet to come, and Jeremiah was given the task of telling everyone the armies of Babylon would keep coming until nobody was left. Imagine that being your calling from God!

To make matters worse, nobody believed Jeremiah; they called him a traitor and by chapter 38, they through him into an old cistern, where he sank up to his armpits in mud.

From that place Jeremiah composed these poems. Is it any wonder they are so dark?

All that to say, if you’re here this AM/PM in a bad place, trust me, Jeremiah gets it. It may not seem like anybody understands what you’re going through. Your family/friends may not understand. But Jeremiah would have understood.

So, if you’ve found it, let’s dive down into the middle of this mud pit with him…

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s wrath.
He has driven me away and forced me to walk
in darkness instead of light.
Yes, he repeatedly turns his hand
against me all day long.

Lamentations 3:1–3

Who’s the “he” in these verses?
That’s not a trick question—it’s God!

These are some of the darkest chapters in Scripture… but they’re still Scripture. They’re still included, for a reason—to show us what it means to

Some of you have gone through dark chapters yourself, and you probably thought some of these same things, but you suppressed those emotions, telling yourself, “real Christians don’t feel like this.”

I completely understand that reaction, I do. There’s only one problem with it: the Bible!

Over and over again we see the characters in Scripture going through these dark moments, struggling physically, mentally, emotionally. And they’re honest with God about how they’re feeling in the moment.

And while they don’t hold as much weight as Scripture, of course, the same thing is true of all the saints throughout history, as well:

On an October Sunday evening in 1856, around 10,000 people were gathered at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London to hear a fiery young pastor. During the service, someone yelled “Fire!” and a stampede broke out. Twenty-eight people were seriously injured, and seven were tramplede to death.

Charles Spurgeon was 21 years old, 10 months married, with 1 month old twin boys at home, and the pastor of the largest evangelical church of its time. That event nearly destroyed him.

Even the knees of a Jesus-follower will buckle.

Zack Eswine

Let’s go back and see what happens with Jeremiah. We’re not going to read the whole chapter, acrostic with 66 verses.

He has walled me in so I cannot get out;
he has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I cry out and plead for help,
he blocks out my prayer.

He is a bear waiting in ambush,
a lion in hiding. (your favorite image of God?)
He forced me off my way and tore me to pieces;
he left me desolate.

Remember my affliction and my homelessness,
the wormwood and the poison.
I continually remember them
and have become depressed.
Yet I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

Lamentations 3:1–3

This might be one of the most profound transitions in the Bible. I want you to see Jeremiah, in his dungeon, sunk up to his armpits in mud, people hurling down insults because of the hard truth God called him to share. Maybe he’s thinking of a child he lost, or a wife, wrestling with the prospect that he might never see them again, and saying, defiantly, “But this I call to mind…”

Because of the Lord’s faithful love
we do not perish,
for his mercies never end.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness!
I say, “The Lord is my portion,
therefore I will put my hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:22–24

But God put this book in there, even though it’s depressing and most of you will never memorize it because he wants those of you who suffer to know that he knows how you feel. And it’s ok for you to express these emotions to God. You see, this lament is honest even if it is not accurate.

This is Jeremiah’s answer to the spiritual dimensions of depression. He shows us what to do in the midst of despair.

Turn your attention to God.

Your emotions, you see, don’t have brains. They can’t think. They can’t show faith. You have to think for them; you have to show faith; and then you tell them how to feel.

Don’t you love this image of the new morning? God’s mercies and faithfulness are like the sun coming up new every morning, washing away the shadows and the darkness of the night!

It’s a normal part of life.

In one sense, these symptoms makes perfect sense in a fallen world. The real miracle is that all of us aren’t in a constant state of panic!

For ever when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were affected at every turn—fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus…

2 Corinthians 7:5–6, ESV

Q: Don’t we make too big a deal of mental health these days?

“I mean, back in my day, we just dealt with it and moved on.” Well, maybe some did… some didn’t; some couldn’t.

You’re right, not every sad day needs a diagnosis. But if there’s 30, 90, 365 days in a row, maybe you need to talk to somebody about it.

Your good genes are the grace of God, not a sign of your moral superiority.

Q: Isn’t serious prayer and faith in God enough? Why look for secular diagnosis?

Assuming that it’s sincere, I appreciate the place this argument starts from, but the logic breaks down when you try to apply it consistently.

Is your body going to be resurrected one day? (you better say yes!). One day, we will come back to life the same way that Jesus did, with the same kind of resurrected, glorified, New Creation body that Jesus had.

That will be a glorious day. Until then, we live in this in-between place where our spirits have been resurrected from the dead, but our bodies are all headed in the wrong direction. It’s that reality Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4:

Even if our physical body is wearing away,
our inner person is being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 4:16, NET

We were made not just as souls, but as wholes. We’re complex. When human beings fell, it affected everything, every part of our beings, our minds were infected with confusion, with doubt. And our physical brains were affected just as much as the rest of our bodies were.

Without a doubt, the human mind is more than just another physical organ. Your thoughts are more than just synapses firing in your brain. So yes, it’s more than that… but it’s not less than that!

Conversion to Jesus isn’t heaven, but its foretaste.
This side of heaven, grace secures us but doesn’t cure us.

Zack Eswine

Q3: How can I help someone who is struggling?

Listen

Avoid pat answers

We want to a solution that works quick, easy answers, but that’s not how this works.

Deep problems don’t have quick solutions.

David Powlinson

Be humble

We have a tendency to judge others according to our circumstances rather than theirs. That’s just natural, because our experience of life is all we have to go on, especially when it comes to these inner battles. But if you haven’t lived through the same struggles, don’t presume to have all the answers.

When we see others in pain, and we want to stop them from it, we must not underestimate what they have had to overcome in their lives. Remember, it has required more faith for some to do less than you.

Zack Eswine

D. Be prepared for the long haul

It’s very easy to be sympathetic/understanding for a day. It’s much harder to sustain that kind of care for a month/year/decade.

There’s a reason that Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 starts with “Love is patient, love is kind.”

That person is a human being, made in the image of God, not a problem to be solved. It’s so easy to form this kind of cold heartedness that says, “Get your act together… so that your struggle doesn’t make my life harder.”

The hope that we offer must match the depths of the wound and the misery of the pain.

Q4: What if that someone is me?

It’s okay to not be okay.

That’s what the Bible shows us. It’s something you need to know. And it’s something that, as a church family, we should always remember.

You don’t have to put on the act to be welcomed before God. And you don’t have to put on the act to be welcomed here, either.

A third of the Psalms are there for you.

We already admitted how uncomfortable we talking to God with this amount of vulnerability. Which is why those Psalms of lament are there. Let the saints of old show you how to come before him when you feel like praising, and when you feel like cursing. They’re God’s inspired prayer journal through every situation you might face in life. Use them.

The Lord is near.

What’s going on in our minds is the most private part about us, isn’t it? You probably have thoughts that you have never shared with anyone, ever. When you add to that mental challenges like depression/anxiety, you can be standing in a crowd—or sitting in a church service—and feel utterly alone.

And if you dare to share your struggle with another believer, often the first thing you’ll hear is a very familiar verse from Philippians 4:

Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God.

Philippians 4:6, NET

That’s a great verse, and they mean well… but let’s be honest, if you’re in the middle of a deep struggle with anxiety, is it helpful when someone tells you “Don’t be anxious. Stop worrying about it.”? Not in the least.

If we’re not careful, we can just be heaping more condemnation on a bro/sis who already feels condemned. “Great, there’s another thing I’ve done wrong.”

Does it seem like something’s missing from that message, from this slide? That’s because there is. Something that changes everything.

The Lord is near! Do not be anxious about anything…

Philippians 4:5–6, NET

Is “do not be anxious” a command? Yes, it is what God is telling you to do, but it’s not a decree coming down from on high with a booming voice: “Thou shalt not be anxious.” No, it’s the tender voice of a Father, holding his child close, saying, “I’m right here… don’t be anxious. Don’t be afraid. Trust me. I’ve got you.”

Not only that, but Jesus came and experienced everything that we have. He was…

…despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from;

Isaiah 53:3

We don’t have a Judge who is far away saying, “Shape up!”
We have a Father who is near saying, “Look up!”

We rightly wonder why God allows depression and other suffering. But let us also wonder why He chooses to suffer it with us and for us.

Zack Eswine

Don’t worry about why or how.

If there’s past trauma you need to work out, that’s one thing. But don’t fall into the paralysis of analysis, because that’s where your focus will stay.

If a lame man is given a cane, he need not know who gave it to him, nor why his leg needs help, before he can make use of the cane’s strength and take a walk in the garden… When we do discover reasons why, we give thanks. But when reasons remain hidden, we learn to give thanks too, and limp, leaning upon the cane. Either way, grace beyond our sight sees us clear. It can bear the weight that we cannot.

Charles Spurgeon

There will be an end.

I know, from personal experience, that sometimes it feels like the weight will never lift, like you’ll never feel right again, like you haven’t seen even a ray of sunshine peaking over the horizon in a long, long time.

In those moments, it’s easy to say, “It feels like it’s never gonna end.” And to that, your Father says, “Oh, yes, it will!. The end is coming, and it will be glorious. You just wait and see.” No matter what combination of darkness you’re dealing with…

Whatever (combination) you’re dealing with today, it’ll all be dealt with one day, once and for all.

Weeping may last through the night,
but joy comes with the morning.

Psalm 30:5, NLT

Our time in this world is our night. Brother and sister, just remember this: this is as close to hell as you’re ever gonna get.

Yes, it’s dark. Sometimes so dark you can’t even begin to see where you’re at or how to get out. So dark that you can’t actually see the One who’s right beside you.

But by God’s grace, through faith in his promises, we can see some light on the horizon, some rays of hope peaking up over the eastern sky. It won’t be long now.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.

Isaiah 9:2

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.