BEST CURE FOR BLUES by A. SWEDBERG

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1902

BEST CURE FOR BLUES.

By A. SWEDBERG

A. SWEDBERG.

The best cure I have found for the blues is Isa. 41:10. If the one thus afflicted has experienced religion, all we need do is to lay this remedy before him; and if it is taken and assimilated, it will most assuredly effect a speedy cure.

It is clear that if God is all-love and all-power, and a tender, loving Father, He will not allow anything to happen to those who put their trust in Him, not even to His disobedient children, but what may, can, and will be for their good, if they will only take the lessons He thus is trying to teach them, and let an overruling Providence take care of all the consequences. We cannot see the end from the beginning; but the omniscient Creator, who rules the universe and upholds all things by His wondrous power, knows what is best for us.

“Fear thou not,” He says, “for I am with thee.” If an almighty and loving Father is with us, what is the need of fearing? “Be not dismayed; for I am thy God.” If you are weak, bodily or spiritually, “I will strengthen thee.” If you need help in any way beyond your reach, don’t hang back and depend upon yourself or upon human power, for God has promised, “I will help thee.” He, according to His divine power “hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.”

But best of all, if you are worried because of inherent or acquired sin, and because of everyday failures to reach the divine standard, remember, “I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Ah, it is not your own righteousness that shall uphold you; for you have no real righteousness. Your own righteousness is nothing but filthy rags, which cannot shield your nakedness and deformity. But what a blessed thought that we have the promise of God’s own righteousness, a perfect and never-failing righteousness, to uphold us. Do you think there is anything in the universe that can overturn this righteousness? Of course you do not. If we, then, are upheld by this, are we not on a foundation, on a rock, that never can be shaken or moved? Oh, let us appropriate to ourselves this blessed righteousness by faith in the atoning blood of Christ, offered to us “freely by His grace.”

The blues come because we look at the dark side of life, at our own weaknesses and failures, and fear the consequences, and despair of ever seeing a change for the better. Let every one who is troubled with the blues forget himself and the troubles of life by looking up to Him who is able to help, and who can uphold with the right hand of His righteousness, remembering that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”