The Great Despairing

Many years ago when I only thought my life was difficult I was watching a documentary on PBS called something like, "The Dust Bowl Diaries". It consisted of photos and film clips from the years of the Depression in the 1930's and excerpts being read out loud from peoples' actual diaries.

Now during those days most people were Christians and they had no shame in that. They spent their entire lives attending church, having faith and believing in Jesus. But as the years of their suffering continued to mount it seemed that they all went through the same thing. A similar string of events that they felt the need to record in their diaries and journals.

The first years when their crops failed and there was no rain, they prayed and prayed. Then after 2-4 years of failed crops they started asking God the question we usually ask when we start facing our first real suffering: WHY?

Then they lost their homes (because most of them were share-croppers). So they bundled up the few possessions they had left and their families and left the only homes they had ever known, "girded their loins", screwed up what was thinly left of their wisps of faith and headed mostly west towards California. Trying to find enough food to keep the few stronger members of their families eating and going.. (Most of us have seen the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" based on John Steinbeck's great novel of the same name). But there seemed to be one more step that Hollywood and Steinbeck left out of real life. In those real diaries I was listening to all the writers seemed to discover: "IT"

That "Thing". That part of faith that happens when your home is gone, your children have starved to death and all that remains is you.  And only you. What I found fascinating is that everyone who continued to write to that final point seemed to feel the need to record it, even when they didn't have the ability to find the words to record it.

Yet, instead of being filled with bitterness and hate, they seemed to find a different level to their faith. An inexpressible level. Dare I say it? A level of PEACE. A level of TRUST. A level of  ... JOY. I became both afraid and curious. And both of those feelings came rushing at me beyond my control. I seemed to know on an instinctive level that if I would discover the "IT" of my faith in Jesus, I would find it only through that  deep a profound level of suffering.

Did I dare to even wonder what that "Thing" was? Did I have a choice? Would it come suddenly? Would God give me a choice? Would I follow even if it cost all that I had? Would I even be able to understand what God was trying to say to me when He is so big and I am so small? By that point would I even care any more? What would happen to me personally for me to get to "that place"? What happens when a Christian suffers so great and so deeply that there simply are no more words and no more "whys"? When everything that once belonged to you is gone: your money, your possessions, your family, your friends, your health, your strength and at very long last ... yourself.  When you realise that you are nothing but a pile of dirt made special because God breathed into you and decided to make you special.

When I was originally watching that documentary, something inside of me knew that God might chose to take me down that road to find out. And that's what these years have been about.
I've found the "It". I came to the end of "myself" and discovered that I wasn't alone.
 God led ... and I followed. The Potter called to me, "The Clay" and I came. No one is more surprised than me that I decided to follow. But He is worthy and I couldn't say "No".  Especially once I started to see the amazing results of obedience.
I don't really have any idea how to express what I've been through any more than those people of faith in Jesus during the Dust Bowl did way back in the 1930's. But long after even the physical strength to write had left them, they continued to record. Continued to give their testimony. Continued to be a witness. An Ambassador. A living sacrifice. Continued to sing, Continued to praise.
And so many people who were "giants" of faith in the Bible suffered on a scale beyond ordinary comprehension. I suspect there are other people out there in the world right now and to this day who are suffering on a massive scale. Especially if we truly are God's people and we are truly are in the last days of this tired old Earth. (Just as described in the book of Revelation in the Bible. Which is where Steinbeck actually got the term "The Grapes of [God's] Wrath" from.)

At first I thought God was doing a renovation job on me, but what He actually said was, "Behold. I make all things new." I don't know if I will be able to describe this any more than anyone else could because the Journey to "It" is mostly a personal and private one. But for all the people I've come across who are quite literally desperate and have been that way year after year after long year, it is an amazing thing that every version of the combination of words "Despair" and "Christian" was available for a blog URL address. So what is it we simply cannot face that makes being a "Christian" who is facing "Despair" a thing we dare not talk about?

Yes. My people are gone now. There is only you and I.  And I have nothing to hide, nothing to fear and nothing to prove. I just live each day facing my own personal countdown to when it will be my turn to leave this all behind. And I won't be able to drop my despair fast enough. But if I am still here, then it is because there is still something else that Jesus wants me to do. Maybe it's simply to obey Him.
But for all the days of despair that it's taken for me to get to this place, I am grateful to the Apostle Paul for being able to express at least that one time what he wrote:

 "we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself"  1 Corinthians 1:8. 
So that I need not feel any shame in feeling this way.

Yet what I find odd is that for all the thousands of articles and sermons and devotionals about loneliness and despair that are currently on the Internet, I am about to introduce to you for the first time this brand new blog: The Despairing Christian.  (With every combination of Despair and Christian that I placed together completely available.)