The Passions of the Soul | Despondency

Our teaching scripture this morning comes from Lamentations

Lamentations 3:16–26

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. 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.