Praying for hope when there seems to be none, is something we can all do.
The world is still reeling from the news last week of the death of Robin Williams. The fact that it was suicide makes it even more devastating. How could a man who brought so much joy and laughter to the lives of so many people, actually take his own life? As we were all grasping for answers, it was released that he had been suffering from severe depression. Some people even said it had been inevitable.
The fact that anyone would consider suicide inevitable, really bothers me. Quite frankly, considering anything inevitable, on this side of heaven bothers me. The definition of inevitable is unavoidable or certain to happen. When we say that something like suicide is certain to happen, that means we have taken any sort of spiritual intervention off of the table.
Do we believe that, “Nothing is impossible with God;” or not?
As Christians, when we learn that someone has cancer. We immediately begin to pray for them. They usually seek some form of treatment in the form of chemotherapy, radiation or surgery and we put them on the prayer list at our church. There will be pleas for prayers all over Facebook. Why should depression be any different?
Depression is an illness. Statistics report that 1 in 10 Americans suffer from it. I wonder why those people never make the prayer list. My church prayer list has a variety of illnesses listed and prayers are asked not only for members, but for friends and neighbors. Not once have I ever seen depression listed.
Do we  believe that God can’t heal minds as well as bodies? Is it possible that people are too embarrassed to ask for prayer for mental illness? If that is the case, then we, the members of the Body of Christ, need to do a better job in spreading love, hope and joy. We need to encourage those among us, who we suspect are depressed, to seek treatment, just like we would do for someone with cancer. But then, we need to pray for them and encourage them to pray.
It seems to me that someone who would commit suicide has lost all sense of hope, hope that life will get any better, hope that they will ever feel any better, hope that there’s a God out there who loves them and has a plan.
Christians are in the business of spreading and sharing hope. With approximately 25 million adults suffering from depression, according to another statistic, we have a lot of work to do. We need to get this illness out of the shadows and onto the prayer list. We need to encourage physical treatment and we need to pray for intervention on the spiritual side.
We are physical and spiritual beings; why would we cover one aspect of ourselves and not the other? I pray that the tragic death of Robin Williams will get depression out of the shadows and into doctor’s offices as well as onto our church prayer lists. Suicide is never inevitable; for nothing is impossible with God.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂