Sadness is Good For the Heart...

... provided that it drives us back to Jesus, to re-examine our lives and cause us to walk right with God once again and reflect on the meaning and evaluate the direction of our lives... that we may walk in the ways He has intended us to go.

I woke up this morning feeling a bit depressed again, a bit melancholic. Perhaps it's partly due to the fact that I've been very busy the past few days... not enough sleep too. So wasn't able to entertain and bless my dear friends very much (thanks Ellson, Joyce, Huanyan, Shuyi and Minchen!) who had a birthday dinner for me at Cafe Cartel yesterday... sorry guys!

But as I sat there, I realised just how thirsty I was to seek God in prayer. So I started singing this song:

Lovely are Your dwelling places
Thirsty, I come after You
Jesus my joy, my reward, Your love's restoring my soul
Now I'm Yours and You are mine

Chorus:
I love You, I love You, I love You (X3)
And my heart will follow wholly after You

Jesus there is none like you
Righteous ruler of the earth
Nations will come and bow down
Name above all names I sing Your praises
And all I can say to you is...

About what triggered it, well, I realised that it's partly my personality as well. And I think the rain.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the role of emotions. I think it's not always wrong to be melancholic... especially if it drives you to Jesus. Because thirst was made for water, as C.S. Lewis put it so well. But if we try to slake our thirst with empty sugary pleasures... we will only find our thirst ever-increasing.

And I find that I write more freely and readily, and once in a while, I get to even do some drawing. :) Hee. Praise God for the joy of melancholy! (Ironic, yeah? But with Jesus, He not only can give us joy that nothing can ever take away... He can also take our sorrows and turn them into joy! Double-win!)

Personally, I find that my most intimate times with God tend to come when I am most melancholic and spiritually hungry. Though initially I find myself reluctant to come to God in prayer... when I do so, oh, how good His presence really is. Not merely feelings, but the joy of His truth and the comfort of sensing His strong and sturdy presence.

There is this Romanian proverb that says: "Only one who has been hungry knows how good bread truly tastes." So may it be too with our souls - the Bread of Life himself. Amen.

“Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.” - C.S. Lewis