Whether it’s your personal sickness as someone clinically diagnosed with this disorder by a doctor, or an occasional sadness in your life opening a window to an inner hopelessness, depression is a big problem.
It monopolizes a person’s thinking and invades any area of joy in life as it takes control of circumstances to convince a person there is no hope.
One type of clinically diagnosed depression is called Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s also called winter depression because it’s seasonal and temporarily affects a person during darker times of the year. One of the effective treatments for Seasonal Affective Disorder is light therapy. Specially designed lamps emitting light (brighter than normal synthetic light) are placed near the person who suffers from the disorder to alleviate the depression. A specific type of light therapy, dawn simulation, effectively depicts a bright, warm sunrise.
No wonder the psalmist, seemingly controlled by his hopeless circumstances, prays to God,
“Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me.”
Psalm 43:3
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It’s the best light therapy you can find.
The star of Bethlehem guides anyone caught in uncontrollable circumstances to the manger where heaven’s light beams brightly on this earth in the Christ child. This Savior comes not to stand above our circumstances and dictate how we should do a better job handling them, but he comes to be part of our circumstances, to experience them, and from within them to cry with us, hurt with us, feel the burden of our guilt, even die.
His light is not a synthetic light that only pretends to be the sun. He is the Sun of Righteousness, the Son of God, the child born for us. His light is as real as his love.
Even more, his truth which guides us is wrapped up in the best dawn of all: Easter dawn. On that morning he changed truth. He broke the tomb of death and the curse of sin. Nothing can change that. Your worst of circumstance aren’t powerful enough to change history, to change that Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead. There he conquered your fears. There he established the truth that will never change: in God there is hope, there is renewal, there is life now and forever!
The psalmist concludes,
“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
Psalm 43:5
More Devotions in this Series
What's Your Purpose?
Does God have a plan for your life?
Who Are You?
God is faithful, even when we're not.
Are You Ashamed?
There's no reason to hide anymore.
Are You Lonely?
God isn't far away. He's right here.
Do You Feel Safe?
Find true, certain safety in Jesus.