Depression – Outlook vs Outcome

Shouldn’t i be healed already? Or I will be happy again once I am healed! Or my circumstances need to change! …When another month or year passes and the new one rings in, it’s most natural for many of us to have these thoughts go through our minds. We were hoping that the previous year would have ended better, in terms of our mental and emotional state.

Once again, we are left suspended between the desire to lead a ‘normal’ life and a desire to be rid of the mental ailing. Don’t we all wish we had the answers to ‘why’ we are in the unfortunate emotional conditions that often derail our lives? If not the ‘why’ at least if we could have answers to ‘when’ this agony will cease?
If we were to engage ‘faith’ in our healing, we may have to come at this from another angle. So, if we don’t get our answer to ‘when,’ then our only other option is faith. Putting our hope in faith. And not putting our hope on a potential deadline for the end of the illness.

So often we, including myself, are entrapped in the outcome of our condition. All the wondering and anxiety of the future. Instead of the ‘outcome’ what if we were to focus on our own ‘outlook?’

If Abraham and Sarah knew for sure that they would have a baby, then they wouldn’t need the faith that they have been forerunners for. Their hope was in their faith. In other words, their faith was embedded in their outlook.

God had to change Abraham’s outlook. Abraham was in his tent one night and having a conversation with God. He was talking about leaving his inheritance to his servant Eliezer. And God asked Abraham to step out of his tent and pointed him to the stars in the sky. God told him that his descendants would be as innumerable as the stars in the sky.

God needed Abraham to change his outlook. Instead of staying in his tent and focusing on the old age, and infertility and impossibility of his circumstances – God wanted Abraham step out and look higher.

To enhance his vision, to grasp the capacity and capability of the promise giver, rather than focus on what seemed impossible in every measure. Abraham had to embrace the promise even as he stared at his circumstance that crossed all scientific feasibility.

God knows our brokenness. He understands our battles with depression. Let’s give him the circumstance that medicine and science hasn’t been able to resolve. And let us transfer our vision from our painful circumstance and fix our gaze on the stars – and the one who is capable of fulfilling promises in ways that surpass our understanding.