Please help me end it all.' And the doctor said, 'Now, now, my friend, you mustn't talk that way. Any one of us might give the answer that was given to a Frenchman who, at the turn of the century, went to a physician and said, 'Doctor, you've got to help me. Guy Delaney framed it for us this way: "What questions can we ask and what answers can we expect? Some questions we hesitate to ask for fear of the answers we may get, and some answers we give are worse than no answers. Family, we offer our prayers, love, and support as you begin to reshape your lives. But no matter what's in it, the book bag always weighs her down. The book bag may be filled with regret one day, feelings of failure the next, and guilt the next. One mother whose teenage son took his life compared it to carrying a book bag loaded with boulders. The family of the suicide victim carries a special grief. If the question were answered and we knew the reason, the riddle would still be unanswered. Someone has written, "If there is God in it, it doesn't matter ever so little how we feel about it: it is an unbelievably precious and incalculable and endless thing." But the nagging question of why? dogs our minds. We know that it is his will that we live. To choose death over life goes against the tide of life that flows from the heart of our Creator God. In our grief and distress, we must acknowledge that suicide is unexplainable. 'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you" (Isa. In this hour of darkness and uncertainty, we look to the Scriptures to give us a measure of reassurance: "'With everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,' says the Lord your Redeemer. Even so, he ended his life in a mental institution, where he wrote his famous poem of despair, "The Castaway." But he then rose out of the valley of the dark shadow to enjoy decades as the most popular poet of his eighteenth-century era. At that time, he felt God demanded that he kill himself, like Judas, in order to hasten his final doom in hell. Cowper's majestic hymn was written after he went through the horror of another mental breakdown. And "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" became Cowper's best-known hymn. "Amazing Grace" became Newton's most famous contribution. Newton suggested they jointly publish a hymnbook. He then resorted to hanging himself with a garter, but it slipped off the nail.Īfter eighteen months in a "lunatic asylum" (as it was known in those days), he was released and became a friend of John Newton, the famous evangelical minister. During a fit of madness, he tried to penetrate his heart with a penknife, but the point was broken. William Cowper first attempted suicide when he was a young English lawyer. This hymn is one of many that were written by a man who had a record of long struggles with the drive to take his own life.
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