•When workers with depression were treated with prescription medicines medical costs declined by $882 per employee per year and absenteeism dropped by 9 days (Health Economics).
•Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24. Treating cases early could reduce enormous disability, before mental illnesses become more severe.
•One in four adults experiences a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, including our returning troops. One in ten children has a serious mental or emotional disorder.
•Suicide is the third leading cause of death for America’s youth ages 15-24. More youth and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined. The vast majority of those who die by suicide have a mental illness-often undiagnosed or untreated.
•Our jails and prisons are now the largest psychiatric wards in the nation, housing well over 350,000 inmates with serious mental illness compared to approximately 70,000 patients with serious mental illness in hospitals.
•One out of every five community hospital stays involves a primary or secondary diagnosis of mental illness.
“I will test you with the measuring line of justice and the plumb line of righteousness. Since your refuge is made of lies, a hailstorm will knock it down. Since it is made of deception, a flood will sweep it away.” ~Isaiah 28:17
The ways in which our Father tests us certainly can seem clandestine to closed eyes. Most of us familiar with our own trials and tragedies would agree that these excruciating circumstances are spiritual tests. I know I’ve had my measure of the mire. I have lost three children — one to an abortion — and I have also lost threepreciouspeople to suicide in three years, and several more as well.
There are times I can scarcely comprehend the magnitude of what I have lost. Some days, it is a hourly struggle to remind myself of the goodness of God in the midst of my oceanic anguish. I pray constantly for the blessing of relief — even through the maddening rage of my grief — and I have a handful of blog subscriptions (including this one) that help me stay focused. Many times, the words I read provide the precise encouragement I need.
I have devoured The Book of Job many times, and God’s speech always gets me at the end. But, recently, I realized that Job’s three friends not only failed Job, they also failed in the eyes of God, who tells Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). While the focus of the book is obviously on Job, that verse made me realize something very significant.
When so many bad things happen to just one person, is God testing just one person? Is The Almighty so short-sighted? Wasn’t He testing Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite as well?
Is not the same true for us today? When we see our brothers and sisters enduring their own fires, isn’t God testing us through them? Do we understand the magnitude of our Father’s love so very well as to serve Him so gratefully by serving others? The purpose of loss is not suffering, but to learn compassion for those who are suffering. In that sense:
Injustice is the measuring line of justice, and suffering is the plumb line of righteousness.
Such evidence demands a verdict. For without injustice, we have no need to demand justice. And without suffering, we have no means to express our faith in gratitude through service. Through my many trials, the times I have experienced the greatest joy has not been when God has taken away my pain — but when I have ministered to others in pain.
Granted, serving others does not remove my anguish or my struggles, but it has been through my suffering that I have come to understand the suffering of others with profound compassion.
And that brings me a wonderfully excruciating joy.
“Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” ~Psalm 30:5b
Every harsh word spoken
Every promise ever broken to me
Total recall of data in the memory
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone
Lord of the here and now
Lord of the come what may
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
(You can redeem these things so far away)
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of the Past
(Be the Lord of my Past)
Oh how I want you to
Be the Lord of the Past
All the chances I let slip by
All the dreams that I let die in vain
Afraid of failure and afraid of pain
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone
Well I picked up all these pieces
And I built a strong deception
And I locked myself inside of it
For my own protection
And I sit alone inside myself
And curse my company
For this thing that has kept me alive for so long
Is now killing me.
And as sure as the sin rose this morning,
The man in the moon hides his face tonight.
And I lay myself down on my bed
And I pray this prayer inside my head
Lord of the here and now
Lord of the come what may
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of my Past
You can do anything
Be the Lord of the Past
I know that you can find a way
To heal every yesterday of my life
Be the Lord of the Past
Larry David Norman (April 8, 1947 – February 24, 2008[1]) was an American Christian musician, singer, songwriter, record label owner, record producer, writer, playwright, actor, photographer, and humorist, who is credited as “a key figure in the development of contemporary Christian music“,[2] “the most significant artist in the creation of contemporary Christian music (CCM)”,[3] the “father of Christian rock music”,[4] the “Godfather of gospel rock”;[5] “Christianity’s first rock star”,[6] the “bad boy of Christian music”,[7] and “the poet laureate of the Jesus revolution”.[8] “By 1970, Norman had the most recognized name (and face) in the Jesus Movement and the Christian music scene”,[9] with Time magazine soon describing him as “probably the top solo artist in the field”.[10] While he had long been associated with the Jesus people,[11][12] and was even described as “the personification of the Jesus Movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s”,[13] Norman himself “did not particularly identify himself with the youth-oriented ‘Jesus movement’ of the time”.[14][15] He has been credited with having a significant influence on many artists, both secular and religious.[16] Norman has also been described as having a “propensity for spinning stories”,[17] and a “penchant for revisionist history”.[18]
Since Norman’s first professional release in 1967, more than 100 of his own albums have been released through such commercial record labels as Capitol, MGM, Verve, and his own independent labels: One Way Records, Solid Rock Records, Street Level Records, and Phydeaux Records. Norman’s first album, I Love You, recorded when he was one of the lead singers for the group People!, was released in 1968. The band’s cover version of The Zombies song of the same name reached number 14 on Billboard magazine‘s top twenty list in 1968 as a single.[19] Norman left People! in 1968 and subsequently performed as a solo artist, appearing both on mainstream and independent labels.[20] In 1969 Norman recorded Upon This Rock, “the first commercially released Jesus rock album”,[21] and in 1972 one of “the most influential Christian rock records of all time”, Only Visiting This Planet.[22] Norman’s recordings are noted for their Christian and social subject matter, having successfully “wed the rhythms of pop music with the spiritual and social outlook of Christianity to create a kind of flower-power gospel.”
–Copied from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My note: Larry Norman seemed to struggle most of his life. He was a very talented and gifted songwriter. Some of his “issues” seem to be proceed from what some considered bipolar disorder, but that probably was never medically confirmed. He was known by many to be a rascal (the kind of person we minister to at BB.)
An excerpt from Christianity Today, announcing his death.
“Christian music legend Larry Norman died Sunday of heart failure, according to his brother Charles Norman. He was 60.
Norman, a blonde, long-haired rocker who is often called the father of Christian rock music, was a giant in the Christian music industry, said Chris Willman, senior music writer for Entertainment Weekly.
“His influence outweighed his sales so much that it’s comical,” Willman said. “He certainly had a heart for evangelism — almost to his detriment, I might say. He really could’ve been a star if he were singing about something other than Jesus.”
Norman’s 1972 Only Visiting This Planet album is regarded as one of the top contemporary Christian music albums of all time. His many hits were at the cutting edge, said Larry Eskridge, associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College.
“The song ‘Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?’ was one of his enduring trumpet blasts against the stodgy, old Christian establishment,” Eskridge said. “‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready’ fit with the end times, apocalyptic feel that was in the air at the time.”
“I Wish We’d All Been Ready” was also featured in the 1972 end times film, A Thief in the Night. In concerts, the singer gave his trademark “One Way” gesture, pointing an index finger toward heaven.
Eskridge said Norman was an icon during the Jesus People of the 1960s but distanced himself from the movement when it became a fad and eventually faded.”
