I picked up this article up from Linkedin - and its credit is to be given to Evert Pieter van der Veen,below is the link to the original article in Dutch:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evert-pieter-van-der-veen-34b2713
SHE COULD NOT FIND ANY JOY
These words were spoken by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands on the death of her sister Inés, who suffered from depression
and committed suicide. These words made me think to Ecclisiastes, which moreless covers the same in chapeter 12:1 Ecclisiastes uses the word "meaninglessness", which was translated again as " air and emptiness". A word that points out the meaninglessness of our existance. Who can give no meaning to her or his life can suffer from depression.
I found this an important theme and it pointed to the mental health campaign ' Hey , it is ok', which wants us to discuss depression.
800.000 people in Holland suffer from depression and our young people do have the need to talk about it, but cannot always handle it.
Jesus met a man, who waited more then 38 years to be healed and said "there is nobody to help me."How many say the same thing today? We can communitcate with each other everywhere - a child of 12 years old has an I phone, but it looks it that loneliness is something we experience more then ever. "Hey it is ok " this is what Jesus moreless tells the man at the Bethesda bathwater and he stretches out the helping hand, which enables him to leave his place of the last 38 years.
In the Proverbs it reads : 'Only your heart knows your deepest sadness, another person cannot share it. We humans have a solitary existance, because when it matters, nobody can feel your deepest feelings.
Eliah , a prophet of our God sits under a bush of thorns somewhere in the desert, dissolutioned , south of Berseba. He cannot and does not want to manage anymore. He shouts " It has been enough." Saint Jacob, the Apostle tells us that Eliah was a human being, just like you and I. The bush of thorns appears often in our lives.
A Dutch writer Anton Bodar published a book recently " Sad Innerbeing." In this book he speaks freely about his depressions,
his attempts to homosexuality and suicide. Bodar recognizes himself in the word " melancholy ."
Many of us know what depression is , I suffered from it myself in my younger days. Can we , like Jesus reach out our hand to others and say " Hey it is ok "
Lord, speak the Word, and my soul shall be healed.
Father Ed Bakker ,
Anglican Catholic Church / Original Province
Mission of Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne
Launceston
Tasmania
Australia
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