Maybe you don't identify with Clark, how about Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown suffers from bouts of depression. Not the clinical kind, but the kind that happens when he focuses in on the negative. He apparently is wasting his nickels at the wrong psychiatrist. “I can’t kick a football, my dog is more popular than I am, I can’t understand a word the adults say, and everyone hates me because of my lame Christmas tree!” Charlie Brown lets himself be buried underneath the rubble of the world he believes has crumbled on top of him. Overlooking his blessings (the kid hasn’t aged a day in 50 years), Charlie focuses on the negative until he was Linus reminded them all of the real reason for the season.
Sometimes abundant happiness around us causes the bad to morph into worse. The depression clouds its victim, obscuring even friend’s and family’s laughter and cheer, creating an isolated Christmas. This is you if you if you have been singing the words to Elvis’ “Blue Christmas.”
What are you to do? Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Fits of depression come over most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy. There may be here and there men and women of iron… but surely the rust frets even these.”
Even King David experienced depression at difficult times. But he knew his hope was in the perfect Word of the Lord. "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statues of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." Psalm 19:7-9.
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