Singing the Blues With Paul
II Corinthians 1:8-11
March 25, 2007
When Charles Goodyear was just twenty-six years old, he had made his first fortune. He had set up the first hardware store in America that sold only domestically manufactured farm implements. Everything was going in his direction. Then suddenly, things changed. Several of his suppliers closed their doors, unable to make a profit anymore, and Goodyear’s store soon followed, and he found himself in debtor’s prison.
Many people would have given up at that point, but Charles Goodyear had a dream. It was a dream to mass-producing rubber products. The problem with rubber at this time was that no one could stabilize it. In hot weather, it became sticky and soft. In cold weather, it was brittle and hard, and easily cracked. Since he had nothing much else to do with his time, he spent his days in prison experimenting with his wife’s rolling pin, trying to find the right formula that would make rubber stable and useful.
After prison, he continued his quest, spending the next five years in looking for just the right formula. But nothing worked. Many of us, most of us perhaps, would have given up and tried to find some other way to make a living, but Goodyear kept trying. Everywhere he went, and with everything he tried, he seemed like a failure.
In 1839, he went into a general store to demonstrate a new formula, but the gathered men laughed at him. In disgust, he threw his mixture on the potbellied stove in the store. He stormed out of the store, angry and humiliated once again, but just at the last minute, went back over to pick up the compound that was smoldering on the stove.
He expected to find a melted mess but instead saw that he rubber had perfectly cured. This was what he had been missing – heat. The simple solution for which he had been searching was heat. He named the new process vulcanization, after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan. So many things we take for granted today, from the tires on our cars to the rubber soles on our sneakers, come to us because one man wouldn’t give up.
I honestly can’t say how I would have reacted after all those failures. It would have been so easy to give up. It would have been so easy to get depressed and decide that this just wasn’t worth it. It would have so easy to just curl up, slink away, and stop trying.
One of the people in our Christian history that I admire the most, and one who I understand the least, is the Apostle Paul. I don’t know how he kept going. I don’t know how he kept his spirits up. I don’t know how he remained so enthusiastic – most of the time. He had low times, to be sure. Those are documented in Scripture. But I can’t imagine how he refused to give in to depression.
This week, I spent just a few minutes skimming the book of Acts, looking for reports of Paul’s struggles. He really had it rough. Here are just a few of the things I found with just a quick, cursory reading of Acts.
At first, some early Christians didn’t believe that his conversion was real, and tried to kill him. After he healed a man who had been crippled from birth, the bystanders thought that he was a god. He used that opportunity to tell them about the one true God and his Son Jesus. Jews stoned him.
He cast out a demon from a slave girl. She was a fortuneteller and was making a lot of money for her master. Since she no longer could tell fortunes, he lost this stream of income and blamed Paul. He had Paul thrown into prison. While there, he was beaten with rods and put into stocks.
He faced another death threat, was arrested in Jerusalem, had another death threat directed at him. He was under house arrest for two years. On his way to Rome for trial before the Emperor, he was shipwrecked. On dry ground, he was bitten by a poisonous snake and then spent another long period of time under arrest in Rome.
Paul himself wrote about his troubles:
…but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in everyway: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…dishonor…ill repute…treated as impostors…punished…sorrowful, having nothing… (II Corinthians 6:4-10).
Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. (II Corinthians 11:24-27).
Today, we wrap up this sermon series on “Singing the Blues with God’s people.” Over the past few weeks, we have looked at Moses, Elijah, Hannah, and Jonah. Each of their circumstances was different, yet they all suffered from depression at points of their lives. They sang the blues because they encountered life events that just got the best of them for a time. Each was able, in different ways, to get back on the right path. Each was able to put their periods of blues behind them and go on with their lives with renewed vigor. The strategies were different for each of them, but they all, in the end trusted God to bring healing and renewal.
Paul too, felt the weight of depression. He too sang the blues at times when the going became almost too much to bear. To the church at Corinth, he wrote, “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself” (II Corinthians 1:8).
However, even more important is the part of the letter that comes next.
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. (II Corinthians 1:9-11).
I think that we can learn three things from this passage. First of all, life can become overwhelming at times. That is sort of a “duh” moment. Of course it can. We have all been there. Paul said that he felt unbearably crushed and despaired of life itself. In addition to his emotional stress, we also know that Paul had the added burden of a physical ailment. He called it his “thorn in the flesh.” We don’t know what that was; many believe that it was epilepsy. But whatever that ailment was, it caused him considerable pain and frustration. The physical stress just added to the stress of his life as a traveling missionary and caused him great despair. He became overwhelmed at all that life threw at him. Life can indeed become overwhelming, even for the saints among us.
The second thing we learn is that God is always faithful. This is the perhaps the hardest thing to understand when you are in the midst of pain. When you are so low that you have to dig up to get to the hole you’re in, it is so very hard to see beyond yourself. It is so incredibly difficult to see beyond yourself and to believe that anyone, including God, cares.
Yet, somehow through his pain, Paul recognized that God had not abandoned him. “He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again…” After he reported his thorn in the flesh and how much it tormented him, he could yet report that God told him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9). In a sermon I found on the Internet this week, the pastor said something that I thought really hit home. He said, “God never wastes a hurt.” In other words, God desire is that we learn from our pain, emerge from it stronger, and find greater faith in the process. In the midst of our struggles, we tend to have a limited view of reality. We get caught up and are able only to see events and situations from our perspective. But God has another perspective, one in which he is able to take away our pain.
The third thing we learn from Paul is this: God desires that the scars from our pain be a story that speaks to others. Paul told the Corinthians that, not only was he strengthened by their prayers, but they allowed others to hear his story. It is our joy to tell the stories of our healing in order that others may be encouraged and strengthened in their own walk. Scars are a sign of our survival and serve as signposts of faith for others.
There are many different causes of depression. We all sing the blues because of different circumstances. Over the past few weeks, we have looked at several different biblical personalities who struggled with depression and blues-singing. For some, it required the intervention of others. We can never be afraid of seeking competent help to assist us through the rough times. Whether depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains or by circumstances beyond our control, God has placed people and systems in our lives to help us recover. I believe that mental health professionals can be God’s agents in healing. I believe that modern drug therapy, when judiciously used, is a tool of God’s healing. Sometimes we have to work, and work hard, to come out of our depressed times.
But sometimes, God chooses to intervene in a supernatural way to heal us. We can never discount the possibility of God acting to heal us on his own. The New Testament doesn’t say that Paul did anything on his own to heal his depression. He simply trusted God, and God brought relief from suffering.
What we do know about Paul was that he immersed himself in prayer and God acted in a supernatural way to bring him out of the depths of depression and the blues. The lesson is that we can’t always let God be the choice of last resort, but rather the first. Whatever happens to us, the experience of Paul teaches us that God will not abandon us.
