God’s Heart for People Struggling With Suicide BY JOHN ESPY for Relevant News
remember coming out of church one Sunday morning, after the pastor had delivered a rapturous sermon describing the joys of heaven. A friend, a devout believer who has made several suicide attempts, asked me quietly, “So why shouldn’t I go there now?”
It is an excellent question, and one the pastor had not even thought to anticipate and answer—and if we’re honest, most of us wouldn’t know how to answer this question either. Suicide and depression are in the news more than ever—it seems barely a week goes by without a mention of a teenager who committed suicide. You might not be suicidal (or depressed) yourself, but chances are, someone in your life or someone who will be in your life will hit a point of despondency. And they may even ask why they should continue living. So what would God say to a person weary of life and eager to end the pain, one for whom heaven is not merely a hope, but a compelling temptation?
Breath of Comfort, Breath of Life
First, I think He would respond as He did to the broken city of Jerusalem:
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On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” (Ezekiel 16:4-6)
In this prophetic story, the newborn, a little girl, receives no parental love, none of the care and affection that are every child’s natural rights. She is despised, unwanted, regarded as “abhorrent and loathsome” (v. 5, Amplified). From a human point of view—in the eyes of the broken and corrupted people who should have been her guardians—she is an unwanted burden, just so much trash. So they discard her, dumping her in a convenient vacant lot where she will either die of exposure or become the helpless prey of wild animals.
