Day 90 - Despair
Scripture focus: Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. Hosea 6:3 NIV
"You were not created to run from challenges, to live in angst, or to drown in despair. This is not a good place for your soul. You also can't move forward into your future when you are paralyzed by fear. Over the years I've heard many people condescendingly describe faith as the activity of the weak. Is it possible that the reason we find God in our deepest despair is that this is when we are most earnestly listening? The word despair means "to live apart from hope." It can then also be translated "to live without a future." No one knows better than God that we cannot live like this. Despair is to the soul what toxic waste is to the body. It's a troubling thing when your soul demands what your brain rejects. We will always be haunted by this soul craving, this seemingly irrational need for hope. We should be able to live perfectly well without God and without hope. But neither proves to be the case. Ironically, when we should least believe in even the existence of hope, when we are most consumed with a sense of our insignificance, it is here we will crave it the most. You can't give up on hope and go on with life. Without hope your life may not come to an end, but does come to a stop." Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 13, Destiny.
Have you ever despaired? Lost hope? Lost your ability to see your place in the story and with it, your willingness to even try?
Victor Frankl learned lessons on survival as a result of his experiences in a Nazi death-camp. He believes that hope is essential for life - and those that lost it in that concentration camp environment, soon lost their will to live. McManus quotes him in his thirteenth entry on Destiny, in his book, Soul Cravings. "Frankl goes on to explain in addressing the issue of despair, "What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."
This is huge. When we fret over what we expect from life, we're only using a small portion of our brain! Our expectations fire up the mid-brain - that pleasure seeking, self-preserving, survival focused part of the brain where it's all about me! Frankl is suggesting that we must engage our entire brain in the process of learning a new way to think about our lives. McManus continues, "Frankl's writings became an introduction to his development of logotherapy, and from that his book was retitled Man's Search for Meaning. But I think rather than moving his fellow prisoners toward meaning, he instead took them past meaning to purpose. Their despair was overcome not by making sense of life, but by believing in the future. Their resolve and resilience to endure the unimaginable came out of souls that believed that their destiny could not be thwarted by their present tragedy. A sense of destiny gives us the strength to face overwhelming obstacles and hardships. At the same time living a life with a powerful sense of purpose gives us the energy and enthusiasm to get up in the morning and face the day. It is in the worst of situations that we are able to discover the best in us. It is also in these moments that we are able to see most clearly what is true and what is real and what it means most fully to be human." When we acknowledge God, we are positioning ourselves to have a fully engaged, complete brain encounter with hope. Hope builds the heart, strengthening it for the future.
Recommended reading: Deuteronomy 12, 13 and 14 in the morning; Psalm 71 in the evening
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