This post has been floating around in my head for almost two weeks now, and I had fully intended to post it here at Broken Believers last weekend, but just didn’t get it done. In retrospect, learning of the great trough our dear brother Bryan is going through, I realize that either I should have made the time or the timing of posting it today is part of God’s design. All I know for sure is that it needs to be posted.
I recently purchased a new book titled The Soul of C.S. Lewis that consists of one-page reflections on various quotes from many of Lewis’ best-loved writings followed by a Bible verse. The book has 10 different contributing authors, and each essay is not attributed to an individual author, but they are all wonderful. Today I want to share a little about one of those essays, along with my own thoughts on the topic at hand.
The Lewis quote that begins the essay is from The Screwtape Letters, one of my favorites of Lewis’ fiction. Although fictional, there is a great deal of truth about the struggles and potential downfalls of the believer in Christ to be found in this short collection of letters between Screwtape, a high-level demon, and Wormwood, his nephew who is a low-level tempter in the minions of Satan. The quote at hand is:
“It is during such trough periods, much more than during peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.” Screwtape, chap. 8, p. 40.
The trough periods Screwtape refers to are the low times in life that for some are manifested as periods of deep depression. Many a strong Christian has experienced such troughs over and over throughout their lives. I have experienced them to differing degrees myself, and our dear Bryan is experiencing just such a trough now. They are certainly no fun, and we often wish we could avoid them altogether, but experience tells us that is not possible. Perhaps it is not even truly preferable in the grand scheme of things as God sees it.
In the essay based on this quote, the author writes:
“Although the emotional peaks are bright and lovely and certainly more enjoyable, that doesn’t mean that the trough is the wrong place for us. The truth is that God is often most at work in the troughs—the hard places where we feel most desolate and alone. Sometimes when we’re trying to clamber back up to the peak, God may be calling us to stay awhile in the trough.”
“At these times we often feel full of confusion, fear, and sadness because we cannot see God’s hand at work, molding us by the very things we wish to escape. It is often only afterward, when he has moved us to a different place, that we can look back and see how he was working in the midst of the difficult spots.” The Soul of C.S. Lewis, pg. 115.
As I read this essay, I was reminded of Psalm 23. This well-known and beloved Psalm begins and ends in the peaks – “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” and “I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” But in the middle is a definite trough – “the valley of the shadow of death.” I’m pretty sure there is no trough deeper or darker than this valley. But – and this is the important part – we don’t travel that valley alone. God is with us in the valley of the shadow of death, He is with us in the troughs of life.
The valleys of deep depression are not signs that we have been forsaken by God or that God has given up on us. He is walking with us through that valley, using every step of the way to help us grow in faith and grace, so that we will be able to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So let us not try to clamber out of the troughs we encounter ahead of God and by our own power, but let us instead walk close by our Lord, following in His footsteps to see where He will lead. He is our Light in the darkness of the deep valley. May we stop to see all that He is illuminating there.
Jesus said, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” John 12:46 (NIV).
Broken Believers 