Spiritual Depression - A Deficiency of Joyful Moments

We are living in depressing times. The world is in a mess and the future appears bleak and uncertain. We try to deny or bury our sorrows and we end up becoming addicted to things, pleasure, and other hedonistic pursuits. Such addictions provide us with temporary relief but leave our hearts empty and only increase our desire for more satisfaction.  We are living in a rat race and behaving more like rats and we wonder why we are not happy in spite of all the material gains we have made.

We have made money our god – we measure our success by how much we have or achieved. We pursue happiness by getting things or people or activities to fill our lives.  We read news reports about “top-earning dead celebrities” – Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley have been named by Forbes as the richest dead celebrities!

Unfortunately, we are blind to the truth that many of the celebrities do not have happy lives.  We fail to see that money, fame and pleasure are the very things that can become robbers of our joy.  We spend our lives pursuing happiness and end up with frustration and despair when death reminds us of non being, non doing and no where. 

Barbara De Angelis, a secular writer, has described the phenomenon of “real moments deficiency” as the cause of our being deficient in peace, contentment and joy.  We are in fact suffering from a deficiency of joyful moments which results in spiritual depression. Jesus came to bring joy to the world. When we receive Christ as our Saviour, we have the joy of salvation and the wonderful promise of an intimate relationship with God as our Heavenly Father.

In his testimony in November last year, Dr.  Richard Teo who died recently shared the following:

“True joy I discovered comes from interaction. Over the last few months I
was so down. Interaction with my loved ones, my friends, my brothers in
Christ, my sisters in Christ, and only then was I able to be motivated,
able to be uplifted. To share your sorrow, to share your happiness – that’s
true joy.”

It is sad that so often it is only when we are faced with a terminal illness that we discover what true joy is. How simple life becomes when we pay attention to the joyful moments that God sends into our lives when we enjoy the wonders of God’s creation and the loving encounters with our loved ones. Our task is to become more aware of the things that rob us of joy – when we live our lives through the lives of others, when we are judgmental and critical, or when we are too busy with pleasing others instead of being true to ourselves.

It is inevitable that we will have spiritual depression when we are slaves of money in our materialistic world.  The prescription for spiritual depression is to understand the truth that God sent His Son Jesus Christ to deliver us from the “Egypts” of our lives. Only then can we pray for God to take our lives and make them the instruments of His love and grace. As we do so, our moments and our days will flow in ceaseless praise to God.