Weather Report From Heaven: Sunny and bright, with an abundance of light and lots of singing and rejoicing.
Scripture- “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.“- Jeremiah 2:13
Thought of the Day- We are fast becoming empty souls. We are trading in human interaction for interaction with screens, and it’s literally sucking the joy out of life and the life out of us. Psychologists are saying that the world has never been more depressed. Recent studies show that almost 50 % of the world’s population is either somewhat or mostly depressed. That is depressing! One of the obvious questions is why? I have heard many different answers offered up, from we spend way too much time staring at screens, which I agree with, to we have no real downtime anymore in an “always on” technology driven environment, to the superficiality of social media and lack of meaningful relationships. Those are all probably at least contributing factors and make sense as to why the world would feed depression. Most people are searching for authenticity and nothing about the above leads to authenticity.
I can only speak to my own life experiences to offer up why I was depressed in the past and it has to do with alignment, or lack thereof, with Jesus Christ. When I had gained what the world had said would make me happy, like material wealth, possessions and a self- focus, I had to be really introspective and honest when it turns out these things didn’t bring the contentment they promised. In fact, because it was all about me, I was mostly empty. At the time, I had a lot of me, and not a lot of Jesus. That was a recipe for disaster. The fact of the matter was I had traded the best thing, which is Christ, for a lesser thing. Jeremiah 2:13 says “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” This is called idolatry, when we put things that can’t satisfy in front of the only One who can. Getting this out of alignment left me depressed! In the darkest night of my soul, I cried out to Jesus for help and He responded in a loving way, encouraging me to forget the past and to draw closer to Him going forward. There was no condemnation, only encouragement to make the changes required to put him first. To this day, I try to start each day reading scripture and getting my mind set on Christ from the time I wake up. This helps me put him in the proper place in my mind, at the forefront. I try to find additional time throughout the day to pray, or seek His input. He knows now my heart is for Him, and He meets me many times through a whisper, or a scripture that will come to mind to meet the current situation. The result is I have more joy, less depression and less anxiety. When we fix our eyes on our screens, we get depressed. When we think about the brokenness in the world, we get distressed. But when we think about Jesus we get blessed. It is simple as that. It’s really all about alignment: When we put Jesus first, our depression flees.
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