Becoming Whole - From Shadow To Light Series

When I was young, one of the early movies I saw was called Pollyanna which was released in 1960 by Disney. I mentioned on Easter that I used to watch the Wonderful World of Disney with my family on Sunday night, and it was there that I saw the movie.

For those who have never actually seen the movie, it was a story of a daughter of a missionary, whose father taught her to see the silver lining in everything. The idea of “The Glad Game” her father taught her became something people tried to do.

It became so embedded in culture that her name has become synonymous with ignoring bad things, rather than the focus which is to find good in things.

I see that a lot in pastors – and preaching and believers and believing. We tend to be a diverse lot – some of us looking at the bad things to criticize people for, and others of us looking at the good side of things. Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller are known for extolling the power of positive thinking. Think Pollyanna here.

There is, at heart, nothing wrong with positive thinking. The only problem I see is that it leads to the idea of a prosperity gospel – that if you are good enough God will reward you. Of course, at the end of the movie, after falling from a window, Pollyanna does regain her trust in good things and the use of her legs, but it only happens through a lot of work.

Why does it matter? If we want to be positive, isn’t that good enough? I would say no. You see, the problem is that bad things happen, like Pollyanna falling and becoming paralyzed. And we often need to hear words that speak, not to the joyful world, but to the hurting world. These words are embedded in the two passages we have as our passages today.

Current statistics show, about 25 percent of us are diagnosed with struggling with situational, seasonal, or chronic depression. And that doesn't include those who struggle undiagnosed. Depression is real - I know, I have struggled with it my entire life.

Today there are a lot of anxious and painfully sad people in our society and in our church, daily walking through what seems to be a long valley of shadows. Or a dark valley as our version translate it. To those walking in those dark valleys, telling them to remain positive does not help.

Many years ago, I was going through a tough time, and struggling with situational depression. Something bad had happened, and I needed to talk to a trusted friend about my feelings. After our discussion, she told me that I needed to change my attitude and pray more and Jesus would take care of it. She, unknowingly, and not in an unkind way, blamed me for my depression, by suggesting that somehow I could fix it if I tried hard enough at keeping a positive attitude and “trusting Jesus” more.

That contrasts sharply with a sermon I heard at Broadway a couple of years ago on the 23rd Psalm. It wasn’t Rob, but rather a chaplain from Whiteman AFB who was speaking, and I am sure it was one he kept in his pocket and had repeated often.

He said a lot, and it was good, but one thing he said rang a bell in this context. He pointed out that you can’t have shadows without light. That when we see shadows, we need to understand that the point isn’t the shadows it is the light in which we see them, and if we turn around, we can see the source of that light.

So, when we walk through the valley of the shadow, or the dark valley, we know the shadow and the darkness because we already know the light.

If we pretend the shadows aren’t there, we can’t find our way to the light. Feeling blue, feeling sad, all of our feelings of worthlessness or sinfulness are all shadows.

The psalm starts in a very good place. It speaks of a shepherd, and it speaks of calm waters and green pastures, and then it transitions into dark valleys. Our lives contain both. Usually we take a quick dip into the valley then talk about all of the good stuff, the table and the oil as being on the other side.

But what if David wasn’t thinking that way when he wrote the Psalm?

What if the rest of the Psalm happened, not in the valley of green pastures and still waters, but in the valley of shadow and darkness? What if the banquet, the oil, are there in the darkest of valleys instead of being back out on the other side in the light.