For the Down and Discouraging Days…

Among the realities of life is this: that all people have problems, that all have disappointments, that all have need to be understood, to be encouraged, and at times to be looked upon with compassion. We all wrestle with reality, with conscience, with disappointment, with discouragement – with days on which our spirits are down. This none escape. Yet always there is reason to hold on, to try again, to have faith, to live through the down and discouraging days.

“It is strange indeed to analyze the alternations of depression and exhilaration which haunt us like a summer cloud,” wrote Gamaliel Bradford, “…day before yesterday, it seemed to me there was no life left in me: exertion, existence was a burden; work, to which I always turn, knowing that patient perseverance with it will distract if not console lost its charm… But the curious thing is that yesterday was no better, in fact, worse, if anything: but my condition was wholly different. I have plenty of these down moods. I suppose everyone has…. The lesson I strive to learn, the lesson which appears so easy, but is so hard, is to remember in the down times that they will not last and that the up times will return.”

Darkness never had the last word. Always again there is another day. Always, eternally there is hope and faith – and tomorrow morning. And this assurance should give us reason to hold on, to wait, to try again, to believe, to hold to hope.

In the words of John Milton, “Bear up, and steer right onward,” – even on the down days. And to all of us it suggests the patient understanding of the moods and problems of other people, as Alexander Pope so sincerely said it:

Teach me to feel another’s woe,

To hide the fault I see;

That mercy I to others show,

That mercy shown to me.