I was truly amazed the first time I read I Kings 17-19 on the life of the Prophet Elijah, a giant of a man for God. What a shock when I discovered his despair in I Kings 19:3-4, “And when he saw that, (Jezebel’s threat to kill him), he arose and went for his life … but he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, ‘It is enough; now, O, Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my father’s.’” What a terrible case of the “blues.”
Dr. Frederick Loomis in his book, “The Best Medicine,” gives us all some great advice.
“It’s but little good you’ll do, watering last year’s crops. Yet, that is exactly what I have seen hundreds of my patients doing in the past 25 years — watering with freely flowing tears things of the irrevocable past. Not the bittersweet memories of loved ones, which I understand, but things done which should not have been done, and things left undone which should have been done.
I am a doctor, not a preacher, but a doctor, too, must try to understand the joys and sorrows of those who come to him. He should without preaching, be able to expound the philosophy that one cannot live adequately in the present, not effectively face the future, when one’s thoughts are buried in the past. Moaning over what cannot be helped is a confession of futility and of fear, of emotional stagnation — in fact, of selfishness and cowardice.
The best way to break the cycle — to snap out of it — is to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking of other people. You can lighten your load by doing something for someone else. By the simple device of doing an outward, unselfish act today, you can make the past recede. The present and future will again take on their true challenge and perspective. As a doctor, I have seen it tried many times and nearly always it has been a far more successful prescription than anything I would have ordered from the drug store.”
The Bible tells us “… forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ,” (Philippians 3:13:14.
Snap out of the blues!
Dr. David Bouler of Global Faith Ministries, Chattanooga, Tennessee, contributed this column to the Journal Review. He can be reached by email at debouler@aol.com.
